Question. Delete.
Simplify.
A ten-minute thinking exercise: applying a five-step engineering algorithm to the biggest new problem in UK drone operations — and seeing what falls out.
William Tyler-Street · Helston, Cornwall
The drone rulebook was rewritten — and it keeps tightening
UK SORA arrives
Every complex operation now needs a SORA — a risk assessment of the intended operation — approved by the CAA.
Remote ID + registration
New drones must broadcast ID; the registration threshold drops to 100g.
Decision No. 60
Tighter compliance guidance comes into force. The bar for evidence rises again.
Routine BVLOS
CAA roadmap targets routine long-range flying — application volume explodes.
Approval is now expensive — and it expires
And the fee is the small part. The expensive part is assembling the evidence behind it — consultant time, data hunting, rework.
03 / 08Approval is a data problem, not a flying problem
To prove a flight path is safe over the ground, the CAA wants answers to ordinary questions — answered with extraordinary rigour:
Who lives under the route?
Population density along every metre of the flight path — not a guess, a number with a source.
What shelters them?
Building footprints and types — a person indoors is protected; a beach crowd is not.
Where does it end safely?
Containment: if the drone fails, where can it come down without hurting anyone?
Can you prove all of it?
Every claim documented, sourced and auditable — and refreshed every 12 months.
I’ve solved this exact problem shape before
Banks won’t lend on a development site without defensible evidence.
I built a live product that takes fragmented public data — planning records, sold prices, flood zones, appeal decisions — and turns it into a lender-ready evidence pack. Brokers use it today.
LIVE · IN USE · PAID FORThe CAA won’t authorise a flight without defensible evidence.
Same fragmented public data — population, buildings, land use, airspace. Same demand for structure, sources and audit trail. Same wall. Different regulator.
THE SAME PROBLEM SHAPEThe concept: “Corridor in. CAA-ready ground-risk evidence out.”
05 / 08Five steps, in strict order — applied to drone approval
Question every requirement
Every piece of evidence must trace to a named CAA rule. If you can’t name it, don’t collect it.
Delete
The old 200-page safety case was padding. Keep only what your risk level demands. If you don’t add 10% back, you didn’t delete enough.
Simplify
Only now: one data pipeline, one document standard, one audit trail. Simplifying bloat just gives you polished bloat.
Accelerate
Approvals expire in 12 months. Renewal should be a refresh, not a rebuild. Cycle time = flying time.
Automate — last, never first
Automating a bad process produces wrong answers faster. After steps 1–4, pack generation becomes push-button.
Most people run this list backwards — they automate a process that should never have existed.
06 / 08You draw the corridor
The operator sketches the flight path — a line on a map. That’s the whole input.
The engine does the digging
Population, buildings, sheltering, land use — pulled from public data, matched to the route, every figure sourced.
Out comes the evidence pack
The ground-risk section of a SORA case — structured, auditable, CAA-formatted, refreshable at renewal.
Evidence is the product.
I build evidence.
Corridor in. CAA-ready evidence out. Question first, delete second, automate last.
Thank you — questions welcome. · William Tyler-Street
The jargon, decoded
SORA
Specific Operations Risk Assessment — a risk assessment of the intended operation. In practice: a planning application for a flight. Structured, evidence-based, approved by the CAA.
SAIL
The risk score of an operation, level 1–6. Higher SAIL = riskier flight = more evidence demanded, and a higher application fee.
BVLOS
Beyond Visual Line Of Sight — flying further than the pilot can physically see. Where the commercial money is. Routine by ~2027 per the CAA roadmap.
Remote ID
A digital number plate: drones must broadcast who they're registered to while flying. Anonymity in the airspace is over.
Decision No. 60
A CAA instrument in force 1 Oct 2026 tightening how compliance is evidenced under SORA. The evidence bar rises again.
Registration at 100g
The threshold dropped from 250g to 100g in Jan 2026 — even very small drones now need a registered operator.