The six covers of a drone policy, and their exclusions

Aviation third-party liability covers injury and property damage caused to other people by your drone. It is the only cover Belgian law imposes, and the only one without which you cannot register as an operator with the Directorate-General for Air Transport.

The legal minimum is 0.75 million special drawing rights per accident, roughly 885,000 euros at the rate of 4 September 2026. The sums insured offered on the Belgian market sit well above that. The gap matters: serious personal injury passes the legal minimum quickly.

Consequential financial loss, such as a loss of income suffered by a third party following covered damage, is generally included within the same amount. Purely financial loss, with no prior property damage or injury, is excluded.

Hull cover pays for damage to the drone itself: a crash, a collision, a botched landing, fire. The value to declare is the new replacement value, not the price you paid.

Two mechanisms deserve your attention before you sign.

Under-insurance tolerance allows a gap of about 15 % between the declared value and the real value without applying a proportional reduction. Beyond that, the settlement is cut in proportion to the gap.

Depreciation generally applies from the thirteenth month, at around 2 % a month, capped at half the value. A three-year-old aircraft is therefore not reimbursed at the price of a new one, and that is normal.

Debris removal costs and the original on-board software are covered up to separate amounts, in the order of 12,500 euros each.

The point not to miss

Mere disappearance is excluded. If your aircraft goes out of range and is never recovered, there is no damage anyone can establish, so no hull claim within the meaning of the policy. If the wreck is found, the damage is covered.

The whole difficulty sits there: two files that look identical, two opposite outcomes depending on whether a wreck was recovered. We check this point policy by policy before proposing a formula to you.

Camera, gimbal, thermal sensor, Lidar, ground station, controller, batteries. On an inspection or survey job, this equipment often exceeds the value of the aircraft carrying it.

Each item is declared separately, at a value excluding VAT. A 9,000-euro thermal sensor mounted on a 4,000-euro aircraft weighs more than the drone in the premium calculation, and it has to appear in the policy or it will not be paid for.

One point to watch, on which the contract documents we have examined do not all say the same thing: what happens to accessories that are not fixed to the aircraft at the time of the loss. We have this point confirmed in writing before every policy is taken out.

What is never covered

The images themselves. A memory card destroyed in a crash is a replaceable item worth a few tens of euros; a day’s filming is not. That loss falls under a separate cover, available as an extension from some insurers, and it deserves an explicit question if your work is in film and television.

Theft is covered, but on stricter conditions than most policyholders imagine. The policies examined generally require:

• notification within 24 hours of discovery;
• a complaint filed with the police;
• for theft from a vehicle, parking in daytime only, vehicle locked and equipment out of sight, in a closed boot;
• for theft from premises, a cylinder lock.

An aircraft taken from a van parked outside a site at 9 pm will very probably not be paid for. That is an ordinary clause in equipment insurance, but it takes a remote pilot by surprise when they carry their kit around all day.

Theft and disappearance are not the same thing

Theft implies a third party and is proved by a complaint filed with the police. Mere disappearance means an aircraft lost with no explanation: one that flies off and is never found. No policy we have examined covers it.

If your work exposes you to that risk, flying over water or woodland for instance, tell us. It is one of the few points on which insurers will sometimes accept a negotiated extension.

This is the least well understood cover on the market, for a simple reason: the legal expenses cover you already hold does not extend to your drone.

General policies, household and business alike, exclude the defence of your interests as owner or keeper of an aircraft. The wording varies, the result does not. Some policies bring back in the wheelchair, the electric bicycle or the sailing boat under 300 kilos; never the drone.

Legal expenses cover for a drone therefore takes a dedicated policy.

What it covers

Civil recovery against a liable third party, criminal defence, civil defence, and administrative law. That last point is the most useful to an operator: challenging a penalty from the Directorate-General for Air Transport is a matter of administrative law, up to a limit in the order of 40,000 euros, twice what a standard business legal expenses policy offers.

Contractual disputes, hire, tax law, and the cost of technical expert reports on the aircraft are added on top, at lower limits.

Free choice of lawyer is granted.

Three reservations we prefer to state

The insurer pays for the defence, never the fine. If the penalty is upheld, it stays with you.

The exclusion about licences can cancel the cover at the worst moment. An operator prosecuted precisely because they did not hold the required certificate will be met with that exclusion. The good-faith clause that softened it in earlier versions has gone.

Civil defence is secondary. Without valid aviation third-party liability, it falls away. It completes that cover, it does not replace it.

On tax

The tax reduction that existed for some legal expenses policies has been abolished from tax year 2026. No certificate is issued any more. Be wary of websites still announcing it.

Basic cover applies to the European Union, generally extended to Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. A worldwide extension exists, excluding the United States and Canada, whose liability regime makes the risk hard to insure from Europe.

The detail that appears nowhere

When a policy extends cover to the whole world, the war and terrorism section does not follow. It stays confined to the basic territory.

Filming in an unstable region is therefore covered for the ordinary accident and uncovered for the very event that made you take out the extension. If your work takes you outside Europe, that is the first question to ask, before the one about price.

For a one-off flight abroad

A temporary extension is almost always possible and costs little. It is asked for before you leave, not on your return. One message is enough.