If you cruise and want to be able to use your drone at ports of call then please sign and help us send a message to the cruise lines.
Currently, many cruise lines ban bringing drones onboard. That means you can't use it at any ports of call on your itinerary. I whole heartedly understand the desire to prevent it from being flown on the ship while docked or at sea but not allowing us to bring them prevents us from being able to get the most memories possible from our vacation experience.

Please sign and spread the word.
https://www.change.org/p/cruise- ... nging-drones-aboard

Thank you!

Fred

I guess a few idiots trying to fly it from the ship ruined this for everyone.

dancopter Posted at 2017-7-13 08:02
I guess a few idiots trying to fly it from the ship ruined this for everyone.

Not sure what it was but this sucks badly. I am doing a 7 night cruise next year and want to bring it with me to capture memories and can't. It's not reasonable to just ban them entirely.

dancopter Posted at 2017-7-13 08:02
I guess a few idiots trying to fly it from the ship ruined this for everyone.

People fly them off cruise ships here....  Which all moor WELL within the airport no-fly zone and actually on the extended centre line of the runway at roughly 1nm from the threshold.

I can see a problem in that people wont bother checking local regulations and just launch the things.

Also, i can see people moaning if they launch from a moving ship and then discover they cant actually recover the things.

One thing that no one needs to be doing on a cruise ship is flying a Drone.  Its just an accident waiting to happen.  

Aside from being dangerous, the speed of the ship may closely match the top speed of some drones. Another problem is; once you lift off, even though the machine appears to be still to you, its now traveling the speed of the ship and the processor is confirming it with GPS data.  

Regards - Mike

I just came back from an 8 day Caribbean cruise on Carnival. There were no problems bringing the drone onboard. I checked their rules and also checked with personnel on the ship. In terms of ports of call I was able to do a short flight from a small Bahama island we went to on an excursion. The tour guides were actually excited to see me fly it but it must depend on the circumstances as I think this would be easier to do on a smaller group excursion. It was a deserted island as well. One of the guides said that you can fly as long as you are not near the ship. The official Caribbean drone laws are far more draconian. A guy on my ship was flying his P4 along the beach at Half Moon Cay.  Made me uneasy as it was quite crowded but thankfully he didn't have it up in the air very long. Of note, my footage on the Bahamas island didn't save to my SD card but it did to my iPad. The video was choppy and not fully recorded. I think the operating temp was just too high that day. The rest of my vacation aerial footage saved fine and completely.

It's worth noting that crew are also not "allowed" to use them on the ships I have worked on, even the photogs.  If they do allow the photo companies on board to use them then the cruise ship companies will get stricter so you have to buy their aerial videos.  Cruise line companies mentality is (right or wrong) passengers may be tempted to fly them from the ship so if we ban them there is no chance of this happening.  With the strict "nothing overboard" environmental policy the ship can be fined huge sums if anything, even accidentally, should go into the water - you're not even allowed to feed the fish.  Plus the threat levels means security is super sensitive.
Also on taking off and landing form the ship -  I get compass errors when I try to fly within 6' of my car due to the metal in the car.  There is a lot of metal in a ship so I don't think the UAV will be very happy landing and taking off from top deck.

These are just a few of the reasons I believe we will not be able to take UAV with us for the forceable future and I think it is only going to get worse - IMHO

I have just read the petition and the "coat check" idea is a good one which will prevent the risk of anyone flying when restricted.