Industry-leading operations platform reaches major milestone, highlighting explosive growth in professional drone sector
| Source: Dronedesk
Exeter, UK , Oct. 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Dronedesk, a leading drone fleet management platform, this week recorded its two millionth flight minute logged by users, marking a significant milestone in the evolution of the commercial drone industry.
The milestone – equivalent to over 33,000 hours or nearly four years of continuous flight time – represents tens of thousands of missions flown by professional operators across multiple continents, from search and rescue operations saving lives in remote terrain to complex commercial inspections of critical infrastructure.
“When we launched Dronedesk, the industry was still figuring out what professional drone operations actually looked like,” said Dorian Ellis, Founder of Dronedesk. “Two million flight minutes later, we’re not just tracking flights, we’re witnessing the evolution of an entire industry. These aren’t hobbyists; they’re professional operators running sophisticated, safety-critical operations that demand proper management systems.”
From Scattered Spreadsheets to Sophisticated Operations
The data behind the milestone paints a picture of an industry rapidly professionalising. Average mission duration has increased significantly as operators tackle more complex projects, while the diversity of use cases has expanded far beyond early adopters’ imaginations.
Dronedesk supports operations ranging from volunteer mountain rescue teams coordinating multi-agency search missions in challenging terrain, to enterprise operators managing fleet-wide inspections across international sites. What unites them is the recognition that as drone operations scale and complexity increases, manual processes and spreadsheet-based logging become unsustainable, and potentially dangerous.
“The two millionth minute wasn’t logged by a Fortune 500 company,” Dorian added. “It might have been a search and rescue team in the Lake District, a solar farm inspector in California, or a construction surveyor in Sweden. That’s what makes this milestone meaningful; it represents the full spectrum of professional drone operations.”
Supporting the Unsung Heroes
Dronedesk’s users span the globe, from urban infrastructure inspections to remote search and rescue missions, collectively logging over two million flight minutes
Notably, Dronedesk provides free access to over 30 volunteer-run Search and Rescue organisations. These teams, often operating in challenging conditions with limited resources, represent some of the most critical and life-saving applications of drone technology.
“When a missing person’s life is on the line, the last thing volunteer SAR teams should be worrying about is flight log compliance,” said Dorian. “We’re proud that some of those two million minutes represent missions that brought people home safely.”
Industry Implications
The milestone comes at a pivotal moment for the drone industry. As regulatory frameworks mature worldwide – SORA in the UK and EU and Part 108 in the US – proper operations management has shifted from “nice to have” to “business critical.”
Industry analysts predict the commercial drone market will exceed $163 billion by 2030, with operations management and compliance software, like Dronedesk, playing an increasingly central role as organisations move from experimental projects to business-as-usual operations.
“The conversation has completely shifted,” noted Dorian. “Three years ago, we were approaching operators to explain why they needed dedicated management software. Now they’re approaching us, asking how quickly we can onboard their teams. The two million minute milestone isn’t just ours, it belongs to every operator who’s recognised that professional operations demand professional tools.”
What’s Next
With momentum building and new sectors adopting drone technology at pace, Dronedesk is focused on continuing to serve the growing community of professional operators. The company recently launched automated DJI flight log syncing to further reduce administrative burden on operators, and continues to invest heavily in features requested by its user community.
“We’re not resting on two million minutes,” Dorian said. “The operators using our platform are doing genuinely important work; inspecting critical national infrastructure that keeps societies running, running missions that save lives, managing projects that push technological boundaries. Our job is to stay out of their way and let them focus on flying.”
The company expects to reach three million flight minutes within the next twelve months, as adoption accelerates across both existing and emerging market sectors.
About Dronedesk
Dronedesk is a drone fleet management platform which helps any company that uses drones to manage their drone operations faster, safer and more compliantly. It enables companies to ditch the spreadsheets and doc templates and to dramatically increase their operational efficiency, improve oversight, and reduce risk by providing a single platform to manage every aspect of their drone operations. Established in 2019 Dronedesk is used by over 700 organizations and more than 2,000 pilots across North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe and it is the #1 user-rated application of its type.
Press inquiries
Dronedesk
https://dronedesk.io
Dorian Ellis
dorian@dronedesk.com
+443300439373
Orchard House
Exeter EX5 1BR
UK
