From Qantas blood to a love affair with drones

As a freelance drone pilot, he is commissioned to take images of communications towers for clients to replace risk assessments completed by human hands. During this particular job, as he was chipping away at the many photos needed for his client, the wind began to pick up, and he was “battling it out, working hard”, in Jose’s words. It was crow season, he told me, “And crows don’t like drones, do they?” Ten crows piled up onto his drone within a minute, and he was forced to problem-solve quickly, otherwise, he would be left with a broken drone and potentially a letter from the animal conservation society.

He resorted to flying the drone vertically because crows cannot fly upwards quickly. He stopped the auto function, hit the accelerator and then saw that one crow continued chasing after the UAV, to his surprise. “I can’t believe this,” Jose told me his thought. “I had to fly out and away from this particular crow for quite a while, and it was a real effort.”

Eventually, the crow let him go, but as his drone returned to him safely, he was enlightened with what his UAV captured: images of a bird’s nest built upon the tower. The crow was protecting its nest, and he thought that was one of the simple pleasures of his newfound love affair with drones.

Aside from the mishap, the job was done in 45 minutes. Within those 45 minutes, he was able to dually provide a client with the information they needed about their tower while reducing the need for physical manpower that would not only take hours but could result in injury.

“I think drones provide endless productivity; this will help industries, not only technology, but with safety as well,” Jose tells me. “I can fly a job capturing 45 minutes [worth of imagery], and knowing hopefully, I’m helping stop that incident or accident occurring. That’s why I do these jobs,” he says.

Aviation in his blood

It was 40 years ago, and Peter Jose’s father, who has now sadly passed away, took him to an old flying school at Moorabbin Airport to ride in a Tiger Moth. A de Havilland Tiger Moth is a 1930s biplane operated chiefly as a training aircraft. That marked the day Jose described as “the start of aviation” for him. “It was in the blood, but it came out from that day,” he told me.

Following that, Peter Jose notched up a hefty career in aviation. He first became a grade one flight instructor, training many pilots with low-level Aerobatic Formation Flying qualifications. Then eight years later, he left that role to become an Air Ambulance Victoria Pilot, which he says was both the most rewarding and heartbreaking job of his career.

“Many of those times were stabilising premature babies in these little port-a-cots, with paramedic teams that would then transport when stable back from the country airport to Essendon’s airport in the Air Ambulance Cessna 404, from there to the children’s hospital in some cases by helicopter,” said Jose. Most memorable to him were when he would pick up children with cancer and then abruptly be told their services were sadly not needed anymore.

After that, Jose went to join the Qantas Group, and he remained a pilot for 23 years. This trickled down to the next generations of his family: One of his three sons, Levi, dreams to be part of the aviation industry one day, and his wife remains a customer service manager for Qantas.

Jose said that he was often praised for things coming “easy” to him when he looked at his decades-long career. “It just happened easily for me because of my father’s background in aviation,” he said. But about six years ago, Jose suffered from a neck injury and was reluctantly forced to take a back seat from his career, which he notes as the phase of “reinventing” himself.

Peter Jose’s reinvention: Back to the drawing board

Back to the drawing board, it was for Peter Jose. Soon after his neck injury, his family prompted the idea of him getting into teaching. After studying and taking some time, it led him back to Moorabbin Airport, where he first started 40 years ago, a complete full circle. Jose became a ground instructor at Swinburne University and found a silver lining in the end.

However, things took a turn when COVID-19 appeared. Students couldn’t come into class, planes were grounded, pilots and aviation workers were stood down, travel plunged into a severe decline, and Jose’s job was again put into question just after he felt that he was finally giving back to the next generation.

As the world took a step back, Jose was again pushed to consider his career options. Coincidentally, he got into contact with an old friend who he worked with at Qantas, Tom Caska, who also experienced a neck injury at the same time as him, and now is the CEO of a drone company, Aerologix. This is where it all began for Peter Jose. He received his RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System) licence and was available for the task at hand; he is most grateful for this decision in hindsight.

“Did I expect to be in this position? No way,” Jose said. Like his email address “No Way Jose”, his life was vastly different to what he ever imagined. “Things change, and you’ve just got to adapt and reinvent yourself and always find a way to improve yourself,” he said. “That’s why I say to young pilots of today, even drone pilots, ‘that’s the key, enhance your qualifications, even in the hardest times, because aviation will come back’.”

The drone industry today, amid a pandemic-struck world

While the pandemic as a whole was – actually, is – a slip from glory for the aviation industry, it’s widely considered as the time when the drone community began to shine. Thousands of people like Peter switched to using drones after being stood down from a position within an airline, and it became the beginning of the next drone era.

According to DroneLife, a popular drone news publication in the United States, 2021 was particularly buzzing for drone users and drone companies. In an article published at the end of the year titled Drone Industry 2021 in a Word: We Asked Our Partners to Describe This Year in Drones, all descriptions were positive. Booming, accelerated, actionable, maturing, emergence, unpredictable were among the words which reflected the industry in 2021.

According to CEO Jeremy Schneiderman, for major drone retailer Drone Nerds, 2021 was a year of growth. “In one word, accelerated – we’ve seen continued growth in the consumer market and tremendous growth in the adoption of drone technology for the commercial market. So really, it’s an exciting time to be a part of this evolution of hardware, software, and payloads focusing on enterprise applications,” he said. “Our Drone Nerds team loves crafting diverse options into comprehensive solutions and witnessing first-hand the efficiencies that drone technologies bring across many industries. It’s incredibly rewarding to see this accelerated growth.”

The industry continues to boom because it is becoming rapidly more accessible, not only limited to government and military agencies but now anyone who can get a licence. Currently, drone use such as Google Wing, which provides Uber-like delivery services and Little Ripper Lifesaver drones are becoming the new norm in an increasingly tech-savvy world.

Aerologix and Peter’s full circle

As mentioned earlier, Peter Jose was welcomed with a full circle as he accepted a freelance job at the company an old-time friend founded. Aerologix has built an advanced “Uber for drones” solution to support pilots and customers. Clients who need aerial imagery and data are met with workers like Peter, who get the job done for them.

Tom Caska has worked in the field for the last two decades, and when he also injured his neck, it was time to venture into something new, which later resulted in Aerologix. “We have been giving him lots of work,” Caska told me regarding Peter. “He has become drone obsessed. Completely reinvented himself,” he said. That’s what Jose likes to call it too, and the rhythm of the work remains therapeutic for him to this day.

So, every time Peter gets a notification asking him to accept a job, he packs his bag, heads out the door and makes his way to the client’s telecommunications tower. The drone will fly around a 360-pivot point, taking images every two seconds at a certain speed automatically, with adjustments depending on wind, and in 45 minutes, the job will be done.

“Reinventing myself is a great thing because this is perfect timing with the industry,” Jose said. “If I can lend a hand and give my experience back to the industry, I always say it, and it must be the catchphrase of today, but that’s a good thing.”

Please find Peter Jose’s website here.