SkyWatch.AI Drone Insurance

This app is terrific. It’s actually a but cheaper at times for me and offers the same coverage. Highly recommend!

New plans do not cover as much as the old plans did and the pricing is higher. We used to get discounts for safe flying and that has been discontinued.

Easy enough to sign up and get insured - I pray I NEVER have to make a claim.

This app was great for years. In Feb 2023, the company started using another underwriter and excludes drones at events or around groups of people. This change has made the insurance essentially worthless to many. Deleting this app and moving to another provider.

I own a drone services company. I was using SkyWatch for my insurance provider as a test run. Recently, I volunteered my time and one of my DJI Matrice 300s and one of my clients volunteered their Zenmuse H20T to search for the bodies of 3 children who fell into the Mississippi River in New Orleans. On the 6th of May, after helping to locate the bodies of the 14 year old girl and the 15 year old boy, I was searching the banks for the body of the 8 year old girl. Suddenly without any warning, someone took it upon themselves to shoot the drone down. The aircraft spun down and crashed in the waters of the Mississippi. I filed my claim with the SkyWatch and noticed that, for some reason, the H20T was not listed on the covered equipment. I do not recall ever removing the sensor from the covered insurance. It was owned by one of my best clients and I would never consider flying it without insurance. SkyWatch and Starr refused to cover it, leaving me holding the bag for an almost $15,000 sensor. What’s worse, it took them a week to get the funds to me. The very next day one of our ground search teams spotted the body of the 8 year old in the currents of the river. With the search team being separated by a canal and without the drone or water assets available in the area, we were unable to keep the body in sight and lost her. Last week, we had to make the very difficult decision to have to call off the search for the body of 8-year old Ally Berry-Wilson, who, when her older sister Brandy slipped and fell into the river, jumped in to try to save her. While I don’t blame SkyWatch and Starr for the children drowning or the shooting down of the drone, their refusals to cover the equipment and delays in distributing the funds caused us to not be able to get an aircraft in the air quickly and hindered our ability to bring closure to the families. Fortunately, with the high profile of the incident, several local, national and international news organizations have been able to cover this incident and are very aware of the failures of our chosen insurance provider at the time. We will not be making the mistake of using SkyWatch or Starr ever again.

Overall, it’s decent for what it provides you. Insurance. The design of the app is just odd though. It’s certainly not designed for an iPhone with the menus and words off the edges and corners of the screen. Must be from older generations of iPhones and stretched or something. It also has not been updated in a year, so I’m a little hesitant to continue service. Fortunately, Apple will soon require an update regardless.

Took me a long time to realize the app wanted me to add a profile picture but when I tried to, it could not locate my photos. iPhone13 Pro.

The menu and search buttons (necessary for precisely identifying a flight location) are so high up the screen (iPhone 13 Pro) that they collide with the battery, wifi and cell service icons, making it impossible to click them. Only sporadically will they actually work. I’m surprised this has been allowed to exist this way for so long.

I’ve used SkyWatch.ai for my commercial drone work since 2020. Their hourly rate is so affordable for the part time drone operator

The team is Very professional and helpful, highly recommended