CAA Part 101 Paperwork for a Stadium Show

Part 101 gets you in the air legally, but it does not get you onto the pitch. For a 300-aircraft display over a stadium precinct, the regulatory file is only the first folder in a stack that also passes through the venue's safety officer, the local municipality, the event's public liability insurer, and sometimes a broadcast crew that wants a clean RF window for the whole show.

Below is the order we actually work in, the lead times that have held up across three stadium jobs, and the two clauses clients keep trying to shift onto the operator.

The document stack, in order

• RPAS operator certificate and ROC number. Attached to every submission, even when the venue says they already have it on file.
• Airspace authorisation and NOTAM request. Filed with the CAA and the local ATSU. For a stadium inside controlled airspace this is the longest lead item.
• Site risk assessment. Launch and landing zones, crowd separation, emergency abort paths, and the wind window we will not fly past.
• Insurance certificate. Public liability cover named to the venue and the event promoter, not just the operator.
• Fleet and firmware sheet. Airframe count, serials, firmware version, and the ground-station build used on the night.

Lead times that have held up

Airspace approval is the one that bites. We now start it six weeks out for a stadium show and treat anything under four as a risk we flag in writing. Venue sign-off usually lands inside ten days once the safety officer has the risk assessment in hand. Municipality permits vary by metro and are the least predictable part of the chain.

Two clauses clients try to move

The first is the abort decision. Some promoters want the call to sit with their show caller. It does not. The second is liability for third-party RF interference from the crowd or the broadcast rig. That stays with the event, and we say so before the contract is signed.

Enclosed stadium versus harbour front

Inside a bowl, the display volume is bounded by the structure and the crowd is behind barriers. On a harbour front, the public can walk underneath the flight path, which changes the separation distances, the NOTAM wording, and how much of the show we can fly over open water. The paperwork is similar; the assumptions behind it are not.