Skyports Drone Services – the year ahead

Alex Brown, Director of Skyports Drone Services, reflects on the last 24 months and shares his outlook for Skyports and the wider industry in 2025.

Since I last sat down to put my thoughts on paper two years ago, the drone sector has undergone significant change. Consolidation has and is continuing to happen. The real use cases for drone services are proving themselves, while regulatory progress is being made – albeit slower than many of us hoped. Meanwhile, the much-vaunted permanent commercial operations are steadily advancing. With so much change taking place, and to mark another year of operations, I thought it would be a good time to take stock of where the drone industry stands and how Skyports Drone Services is navigating it all. 

Consolidation is happening 

In 2021 money was cheap and risk was on. Drones were the future and any company with a pitch deck and a dream could raise a  £10m+ round. 

This all changed in 2023. Investors went from growth at all costs to proven business models, profitability and lower valuations.  

Drone companies struggled to raise money and, in 2023 and 2024, we saw consolidation, with an increase in mergers and bankruptcies. The shift is ongoing, and we can expect to see similar challenges emerge in 2025. While the consolidation process is challenging, it will ultimately lead to a more mature and focused industry, with stronger, clearer business models that are better positioned for long-term growth 

At Skyports, we’ve witnessed the shift with suppliers and OEM partners. As a drone airline, we depend on the OEMs we work with, so we’ve dedicated time to evaluating the health and performance of our partners to support our long-term stability.  

When we began raising money for our Series C funding round in 2023, I saw first hand the shift in investor sentiment as we engaged with existing and prospective shareholders. Despite the challenges, our clear and lean business strategy helped us connect with ACS Group, one of the world’s leading construction and infrastructure companies. 

With ACS Group’s mandate to invest in sustainable mobility, Skyports was a natural fit. Through Skyports Infrastructure, ACS Group is involved in development of new infrastructure for eVTOL aircraft. Meanwhile, Skyports Drone Services provides ACS Group with world-leading drone inspection services for its infrastructure and construction projects globally. We’ve already hit the ground running, with several joint projects underway between ACS Group and Skyports. 

Real drone use cases 

Over the years, drone operations have been presented as the answer to every logistical challenge. It didn’t matter the question, the answer was drones. 

I’ve always struggled with this. Yes, drones can be extremely useful. But they are only useful to the extent that they are better then the normal way of doing things. Is it faster? Cheaper? Safer? More sustainable? 

At Skyports, when we’ve asked those questions we’ve always come back to the higher value B2B sector. Within our delivery vertical we specialise in offshore energy and hard-to-reach areas. Within our inspection business we focus on linear assets and persistent surveillance. 

Offshore energy is growing focus area for us. In 2024, we performed hundreds of deliveries to offshore oil and wind platforms, and in 2025, we’re expanding with new delivery aircraft, including a larger vertical take-off drone that can carry significantly more cargo. While we haven’t reached the 24/7/365 goal of drone delivery operations for offshore energy, we’re making significant progress, with countries like Norway and Germany leading the way in fostering supportive regulatory environments.  

Our inspection vertical has also grown rapidly. In Singapore, we work with the Public Utilities Board and the Maritime Port Authority to deliver comprehensive surveillance of their assets. In the UK, we assist major linear asset owners to provide analysis of the health and performance of their rail, road, and power infrastructure. Our fleet contains the Stellaire drone, a high-performance aircraft capable of capturing LiDAR, thermal, and photogrammetry data in a single flight. This allows us to identify issues like tree encroachment on powerlines or cracks in conductors.  

Occasionally, unexpected use opportunities emerge. Two years ago, we began discussions with data company Makutu about leveraging drones for water monitoring to assist the UK’s water companies in assessing and monitoring water quality. After rapid development with our OEM Speedbird Aero, we launched a water sampling service that has now completed thousands of flights with Northumbria Water, providing real-time sample data to monitor water health and enable rapid responses. 

These use cases share common elements: they are high-value, time-sensitive, and typically (though not always) involve BVLOS operations with a high degree of automation. This is our sweet spot. Integrating into these sorts of supply chains may not seem glamourous, but it’s an area where we believe drones add immense value. 

Regulatory progress 

At last count we had flown drones in 15 countries worldwide, engaging with numerous aviation regulators along the way. While most are well-intentioned and have admirable objectives, the quality of execution varies significantly across different regions. 

The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) has been leading the charge for years. The regulator set a global benchmark with its early adoption of a Centralised Flight Management System (CFMS). Commercial drone operations in the country simply plug in to the CFMS, enabling innovative BVLOS operations to occur across the country in a safe manner, with full regulatory oversight. In December 2024, CAAS reinforced its leading position by releasing a tender for an Unmanned Traffic Management System, marking a key step towards expanding BVLOS operations across the country, and hopefully one day internationally. 

In the UK, regulatory progress is a mixed bag. The CAA has taken positive steps towards the usage of “Atypical Air Environments” – airspace which, by its very nature, sees minimal aviation activity. This is a major step for our inspection work, providing a clear regulatory pathway for our use cases like linear asset inspection and security patrols. Progress for drone deliveries, however, has been slower. We are still some way off drone deliveries in unsegregated airspace, despite a lot of work by a lot of companies, including us. Achieving this milestone would represent a step change in investment and job creation for the UK economy. 

We are seeing significant progress in the Middle East. In the UAE, both the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) and Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) have advanced rapidly, already enabling commercial drone operations in the country. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) is making strides. These are two countries where we will be flying drones in 2025, and as further evidence of their regulatory readiness and appetite for innovation, they are also markets where our Skyports Infrastructure colleagues are making very strong progress in the build out of vertiports. 

A consistent theme across all of the countries we operate in is that a suboptimal regulatory framework is better than no framework at all. We can work within the limitations of a flawed or underdeveloped framework, but we can’t do much when there’s no clear route to flying. 

So 2025? 

2025 will be a year of continued (and measured) growth for us. We will keep expanding in areas where we believe drones deliver meaningful value. We are currently hiring in the US and will soon be hiring in my home country of Australia – both markets where regulations are progressing rapidly and our existing customers have extensive operations. We look forward to sharing our journey and we’d love to hear from you if you’d like to be involved. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or through our our contact form.