The El Dorado Hills company says it now serves more than 120 energy and utility organizations globally and has logged more than 63 million flights as operators prepare for FAA Part 108.
AirData UAV has announced that it has surpassed 120 energy and utility customers worldwide, a milestone the El Dorado Hills, California company is positioning within a broader scaling moment for the energy drone sector. According to AirData, its customer base in the segment now includes electric utilities, oil and gas operators, and utility service providers running inspection, survey, and emergency response programs across critical infrastructure.
The platform reports more than 63 million logged flights and 457,000 active pilots across 232 countries and territories. AirData recently joined the Commercial Drone Alliance as the U.S. industry prepares for the FAA’s anticipated Part 108 BVLOS rule, Dronelife reported in May.
Why AirData Energy and Utility Customers Are Growing
According to figures cited in AirData’s announcement, the inspection drone market reached $11.64 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $25.82 billion by 2030, with the energy and power segment expected to account for the largest share of the utility drone market in 2026. The company says operators are expanding programs across transmission lines, pipelines, emissions monitoring sites, and other critical infrastructure, with corresponding growth in documentation and compliance demands.
“The energy sector has been one of the most operationally complex verticals we serve,” said Eran Steiner, CEO and Founder of AirData UAV. “These programs operate under strict regulatory requirements, manage complex multi-site fleets, and need documentation that holds up to scrutiny. What we’ve built at AirData is a platform designed for exactly that level of detail. As BVLOS operations become more standardized and programs continue to scale, AirData is engineered to scale with them, even the most complex, multi-site deployments in the industry.”
Dronelife previously documented how Pacific Gas & Electric uses AirData to automate BVLOS compliance documentation across its drone program, an early example of the kind of utility-scale workflow the company is now expanding.
Part 108 and the AirData Energy and Utility Workflow
The FAA’s proposed Part 108 rule, released as an NPRM in August 2025, would replace the current individual waiver system with a standardized framework for BVLOS operations. AirData says its platform is built around the compliance and documentation workflows operators will need under the new framework, including automated flight records, fleet readiness tracking, and reporting against multiple aviation authorities such as the FAA, CASA, Transport Canada, and CAA.
Richard Turner, Specialty Services Manager at offshore oil and gas drone services operator CAN-USA, was quoted in the announcement. “AirData has helped us manage our drone operations with the structure and oversight expected in a professional aviation environment. The platform gives our team precise insight into aircraft performance, battery health, maintenance status, and pilot activity, while tools like the 3D Player provide the unmanned equivalent of a ‘black box’ flight recorder that adds critical operational transparency and credibility for offshore oil and gas operations.”
The 3D Player Turner referenced is AirData’s 3D Flight Player, a flight replay and analysis tool that turns telemetry into an interactive 3D environment for post-flight review, which Dronelife covered in March.
More information is available at AirData UAV.
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With the upcoming FAA Part 108 regulations looking to standardize BVLOS operations, how will platforms like AirData integrate automated compliance tracking with external international validation protocols, similar to the multi-jurisdictional verification frameworks discussed at https://example.com/regulatory-compliance-verification for complex digital systems?