The challenge
A parade is not a site but a ribbon. The floats travel in just over ten hours from Noordwijk via Sassenheim and Lisse to Haarlem, through six municipalities. Spectators line the entire route and drone footage of the flower fields is popular, so there is a lot of flying.
We were flying there for the organiser ourselves. Above a route where the crowd stands close to the floats, you want to know who else is up before you take off. One unit does not cover a route like that end to end, so we focused on the busiest point.
The approach
One DRID on a fixed, elevated position along the stretch of the route where most spectators gather. No chain of units, but a single point where a conflict in the air would have the greatest consequences.
- Fixed zone above the public area along the route
- Live picture on the pilot's phone before and during the flight
- SMS alerts to the organiser's safety coordinator
- Export of all observations for the debrief afterwards
The result
On the day of the parade the platform registered 17 observations, 15 of them flown by someone other than ourselves. All of those flights complied with the rules and stayed outside the zone. Nobody was approached that day, simply because there was no reason to.
That outcome is as useful as a run of interventions. The organiser can show with data that the airspace above the busiest stretch was in order, instead of having to assume it. And our own flight knew all day what was around it.