Commercial drone operations for inspection and survey. CAAM authorisation in Malaysia, BVLOS, flare stack and confined space use cases, and how aerial inspection compares with rope access and scaffolding on both cost and risk.
Flying a drone legally and being accepted to inspect an asset are two different permissions, granted by two different authorities. Pilots who hold only the first keep discovering, at the gate, that it was never the qualification the job required. By MarineCraft Journal · 21 August 2026 · 9 mins read Two … Read more
Flying a drone along a hundred kilometres of pipeline, or out to an offshore platform, means flying it where the pilot cannot see it. That single step, beyond visual line of sight, is where casual drone work ends and a formal safety case begins. Here is what regulators, including Malaysia’s, actually require.
Methane is invisible, worth money, and a powerful greenhouse gas. Regulators and buyers no longer accept an estimate of how much is leaking. They want it measured, at the source, and verifiable, and drones are becoming the tool that makes that possible.
Two of the most dangerous jobs in the industry are climbing a flare stack and entering a storage tank. A drone can now do the first look on both without a single person leaving the ground, and increasingly the classification societies accept the result.
Class societies accept remote inspection in place of close-up survey, but only from a UR Z17 approved supplier with a surveyor watching live.
A drone over an industrial site is not a gadget. In Malaysian airspace it is an aircraft, and flying one for commercial work without the right certification, permit, and insurance is not a grey area. It is illegal, and enforcement has moved from theory to practice.
