Introduction
Flying a photography drone in Switzerland can be super cool, but there are a number of things to consider. What are you allowed to do, and what is forbidden? Are there resources which can help me with this, and help me with flying in general? This is the whole point of this blogpost, a compilation of resources which make your life easier.
Drone Rules in Switzerland
Switzerland adopted the European Union drone regulation in 2023, which does have direct effects on everyone flying a photography drone! I wrote a blogpost (in German) about it, which may be interesting to you. Here are a couple of links to the the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA), also abbreviated with BAZL from its German name.
Most photography drones I know of, will either fall in the “open category” or the “transitional category”.
- If your drone has a CE marking and a class identification label, the rules of the “Open Category” may apply
- If the class identification label is missing, the rules of the “transitional category” may apply
- A lot of the questions coming up in the two links above are answered in this FAQ page
- The flow diagram in this drone guide can be very helpful to determine, whether you are allowed to fly. It has active links embedded which is also super helpful!
Everyone who wants to fly a drohne with a camera needs to be registered. You may also have to do get a certificate depending on what drone you fly.
Here is a link to UAS.gate from FOCA, where you can sign up and register yourself. If you already have a certificate issued from another EU Member state, which was issued under the same set of regulations, it will also be recognised by Switzerland.
Resources to Plan your Flight
The following resources can be helpful to plan your flight.
National Flight restriction Maps
The most important ressource is the FOCA drone map, which I have embedded for your convenience. The link to it can be found in the box below.
- FOCA drone map with flight restrictions. Make sure to zoom in close enough to see smaller restriction zones.
- Temporary flight restrictions can be found in the Daily Airspace Bulletin Switzerland (DABS)
- FOCA published a guide how to read the DABS
- The App “swisstopo” can show the same information as the FOCA drone map as an overlay. Link to the Google Playstore and Apple App Store
Regional Flight restrictions
As always in Switzerland, next to the national flight restrictions, different cantonal or regional restrictions can apply. We call this the “Kantönligeist” – if you ever wanted to learn a very Swiss German word 🙂
Some of these restrictions are integrated into the FOCA drone map, but not necessarily all. This makes it hard and cumbersome for any pilot in Switzerland to find out what is actually allowed and what not. As of now, I’m not aware of an easy solution where cantonal or regional restrictions can be found. If you come across any, please reach out and let me know.
Weather
Another very important resource for drone pilots is weather information. Below are some, which are helpful in one way or another.
- There are tons of weather apps available. I tend to use the SRF meteo for good predictions of what I can generally expect. You can find both android and apple version of the corresponding app.
- Droneweather from meteomatics is a site which provides expected temperatures, humidity and wind at different altitudes at a particular location. Very useful additional information since these conditions may be different at 100 m flight altitude than what you experience on the ground.
Other Apps
There are a number of apps, which are specifically built for swiss drone flying.
One is “Drone Maps”, which as of writing this post does not reflect the new drone rules in Switzerland. Another one is “TCS Drohnen”, which I don’t have installed. The last update is from mid December 22, which is why I’m also not sure whether the new rules are reflected. As soon as I know anything new, I will update this section.
If you know of any other resources, which are helpful for drone photographers, please put it down below into the comments.
