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dronesurveying.com.auThe approvals and the surveyor behind a drone survey

A guide in five waypoints

Drone surveying: the flight approvals and the surveyor behind a drone survey

A survey drone often has to fly where the everyday drone rules stop: beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight, within 3 nautical miles of a controlled aerodrome’s movement area, or after dark. Each of those takes the flight outside the standard RPA operating conditions and brings rules of its own, set out in the guides below, and the land being mapped may be land whose survey the law reserves to a registered or licensed surveyor.

A guide published by Dotto, from the official sources listed at the foot of each page, checked on 9 October 2026.

A drawn flight plan: a dashed track crosses a land parcel marked with four boundary pegs, passing five numbered waypoints in order, a 3 nautical mile arc around a runway, and a crescent moon for night flight 1 2 3 4 5
Drawn for this guide: a flight track over a surveyed parcel, with the five waypoints below.
The five waypoints

One permission or one law to each guide

  1. WP1The standard operating conditions

    All of CASR r 101.238, word for word. A flight is in standard RPA operating conditions only if every paragraph holds “at all times during the operation”.

  2. WP2Beyond visual line of sight

    Flying beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight is a strict liability offence of up to 50 penalty units without a r 101.029 approval and its conditions met, and a remote pilot licence on its own does not lift it.

  3. WP3Flying near airports

    Two 3 nautical mile lines around a controlled aerodrome, measured from different starting points, and the eighteen directions in CASA 40/26.

  4. WP4Flying at night

    Night flight needs another Part 101 provision, an air traffic control direction, or a r 101.029 approval for the purposes of r 101.095(1A); CASA 01/17’s conditions are set out in full.

  5. WP5Surveyors in NSW, SA, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT

    The section of each Act that reserves survey work, and the penalty for doing it without being registered, licensed or supervised.

Currency

The instruments as they stood on 9 October 2026

The aviation law these guides rest on, with the dates each source gives
InstrumentVersion readWhat changed after it
Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998Compilation No. 102, the law as in force on 30 June 2026Schedules 2 and 3 of the Minor Changes Regulations 2026, from 29 September 2026; in Part 101 they replace only rr 101.046 and 101.255, on certificates of airworthiness
Part 101 Manual of Standards 2019Compilation No. 10, as in force on 30 April 2024An amendment made on 7 October 2026, commencing the day after registration, changes a note in s 1.04(2) and replaces Chapter 3, on large RPA certificates of airworthiness
CASA 40/26As made, 23 September 2026Repealed CASA 66/24; is itself repealed at the end of 20 September 2029
CASA EX63/26As made; commenced 1 September 2026Repealed at the end of 31 August 2028
CASA 01/17Compilation No. 1, prepared on 3 August 2023No later change in the sources read
Flight and survey

Two halves of one job

Fields and a road seen from directly above, with long tree shadows falling across a green paddock
Paddocks and a road from directly overhead. Photo by Pexels on Pixabay.

The aviation rules decide where, when and how the drone may fly. The surveyors’ Acts decide who may carry out the survey. South Australia’s Survey Act shows how close the two can sit: it defines a cadastral survey as determining the boundaries of land by measuring distances and angles “or by photogrammetry”, and reserves that work, for fee or reward, to licensed surveyors and those working under their supervision or through them, apart from a survey done as part of a training course the Institution of Surveyors has approved.

Registration, weight categories, and the licence and certificate behind paid drone work are set out on CASA’s drone pages; this guide begins where a survey flight leaves the standard conditions.

Each guide prints the rule in the law’s own words where it can, with the date the source gives, and names its sources at the foot of the page.