About

My name is Johan van Erkel. When you send the form or book a call, I am the person who reads it, and if we work together I am the person who writes your documents. There is no account team and no handover.

Where this comes from

My background is in aviation rather than in drones: professional airline flight-operations experience. That work is mostly about procedures — writing down how an operation runs, showing an authority that the risks have been thought through, and keeping the paperwork true to what people actually do on the day. It turns out that is most of what drone approval is as well.

The difference is that large operators have whole departments for it and a roofing company with two drones does not. That gap is the reason this practice exists.

I have been through this myself

We hold our own Specific category authorisation and fly under it — the applicant and the operator, not only the author. So the process described on this site is not something I have only read about — it is the one I went through, with the same kind of authority, filling the same gaps in the same order.

Two Specific category operations manuals written by us and approved by Transpordiamet — the national civil aviation authority of Estonia. Those are our own operating documents rather than a client's, and I mention them for one reason: the paperwork I would write for you is the kind that has already been put in front of a regulator and come back approved.

How I work

Plainly, and in your language rather than the regulator's. You should not have to learn what a Specific category operation is — the middle tier of European drone rules, where most commercial work lands — in order to find out whether your idea is allowed. That is the job you would be hiring me for. I will tell you early if I think the answer is no, or if you do not need me at all, because a project that was never going to work is bad for both of us. If you would rather see the shape of it before talking to anyone, the whole engagement is written out step by step.

I take on a limited number of projects at a time so each one gets direct involvement and practical support. What I cannot do is promise an outcome. Final approval is always issued by the relevant aviation authority. What I can do is make sure that what reaches them is complete, honest, and in the shape they expect.