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C-DRONE GUIDE · 12 OCTOBER 2026
Drones in the Oise (60): Beauvais, Creil, Chantilly, Compiègne
The Oise is often treated as a mere outer ring of the Paris region. For a remote pilot it is a department of its own, where four different regimes meet within a few dozen kilometres: an airport that has become France's ninth busiest, a former air base turned into a military intelligence hub, two great historic estates each with its own rules, and an industrial valley dense with Seveso sites. For each sector, this departmental guide explains who authorises what and which business missions actually take place.
Published on 12 October 2026 — regulations in force as of September 2026.
Beauvais-Tillé and the south of the department: controlled airspace
Beauvais-Tillé airport handled 6.7 million passengers in 2025, a new record up 2% year on year, with nearly 40,000 aircraft movements: it is now France's ninth busiest airport. For a drone, this means an active control zone covering the Beauvais urban area and its business parks, where any mission above the height allowed by the map requires agreement with air navigation services, and a schedule compatible with dense commercial traffic early in the morning and in the evening. The exact limits are read at the site's address on the official drone restriction map, cross-checked against the aeronautical information service's publications.
The south of the department raises a different question: its proximity to Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airspace, whose controlled volumes extend well beyond the Île-de-France region. Senlis, Chantilly, the Valois and part of the Creil urban area must be checked systematically, because the maximum heights allowed there may be well below the 120 metres of the open category. Again, no figure to remember: the map, at the address, on the day of preparation.
Outside these two sectors, the Picardy plateau, the Pays de Bray and the Valois plain offer vast, sparsely populated farmland where the open category applies under simple conditions. That is where agricultural missions and a good share of linear construction surveys take place; it is also where the prevailing westerly wind decides postponements more often than regulations do.
Creil-Senlis: a base without aircraft, but not an ordinary site
Air Base 110 at Creil ended permanent flying activity in 2016, and its runways are closed. Many conclude that the sector has become ordinary again. The opposite is true: by a decision of 23 July 2024, effective in September 2024, the site became the Creil-Senlis Joint Services Hub, hosting in particular military intelligence bodies — intelligence training, imagery interpretation, electromagnetic emissions — and the joint geographic establishment. In other words, a site whose sensitivity lies less in air traffic than in what could be photographed there.
For a mission nearby, two checks are therefore needed, and they are separate. The first concerns the flight: an active military site remains an area you do not fly over, with the criminal penalties provided by the Transport Code. The second concerns data capture: sites of this kind are exactly what the ZICAD regime targets — zones where recording, storing or distributing aerial images of a protected perimeter is prohibited even when the flight itself would be lawful. The ZICAD layer is checked on Géoportail before pricing, not after the flight.
In practice, an industrial company or landlord in the neighbouring municipalities — Creil, Senlis, Verneuil-en-Halatte, Villers-Saint-Paul — should expect a serious operator to ask for the exact footprint to be covered, orient the shots so they face away from the military site and, if the mission truly requires it, apply for a waiver whose lead time is counted in weeks.
Chantilly and Compiègne: two estates, two points of contact
The Chantilly estate was bequeathed in 1886 by the Duke of Aumale to the Institut de France, which still owns it, forest included: 6,344 hectares straddling the Oise and Val-d'Oise. The château states it plainly: flying over it is forbidden without prior authorisation from the château, and only once that agreement is obtained does the remote pilot file the prior notification for a flight in a populated area — now at least 10 working days before the flight. Professional shoots must also be requested in advance. For an events agency, a trade-fair organiser or a production working around the Great Stables or the racecourse, the owner's consent is therefore the first step, even before civil aviation.
The Compiègne state forest, at 14,485 hectares, is France's third-largest state forest after Orléans and Fontainebleau. It belongs to the State and is managed by the National Forests Office (ONF): the ONF is the body to contact for a mission taking off or operating in the forest, and the Palace of Compiègne, a national museum, for anything concerning the palace and its park. Missions here are mainly forestry and heritage: inventory, health monitoring, the condition of forest roads and ponds, documentation of the palace roofs.
Health monitoring is the growing topic. Successive droughts have multiplied dieback in the broadleaf forests of northern France, and multispectral drones are a way to spot stressed crowns before they are visible from the ground. A study published in 2017 in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing by Jonathan Dash, Michael Watt, Grant Pearse, Marie Heaphy and Heidi Dungey simulated a disease outbreak on mature pines, treated in a targeted way, and followed their evolution by drone: very high resolution multispectral imagery detected the physiological stress of the treated trees, with a sensitivity that depended on when the images were acquired (see the study). For a forest manager, the lesson is to schedule several passes rather than one. The method applied to French forests is detailed in our guide on forestry by drone.
The Oise valley: Seveso sites, prevention plans and co-activity
The Oise has around forty Seveso establishments, about twenty of them upper-tier, largely concentrated along the river between Compiègne and Creil. The Villers-Saint-Paul chemical platform is the typical example: 40 hectares on the banks of the Oise, where Arkema (upper tier) makes photocurable resins and Dow France (lower tier) makes acrylic polymers in solution. Around it, the valley lines up steel processing, logistics and food industry.
On these sites the difficulty is not aviation but industrial. A flight is prepared like any intervention by an outside contractor: written consent from the operator, a prevention plan, a co-activity analysis covering vehicle traffic and loading operations, ATEX zones identified and excluded from the flight plan, a take-off point approved by the HSE department. Our guide on hosting a drone mission on an industrial site describes what the site operator must prepare on its side. The most requested missions: roof and cladding inspection, thermography of pipe insulation, surveys of retention ponds, monitoring of extension or dismantling works, and images for internal emergency plan exercises.
One point of vigilance specific to this sector: several of these sites neighbour one another, and the Creil-Senlis joint services hub. A flight plan covering one roof can, simply through framing, capture a neighbouring site that has authorised nothing. The operator must therefore define the camera field as carefully as the trajectory, and the delivered report must contain only what the client is entitled to hold.
Method, formalities and 2026 prices
In the Oise, preparing a mission always follows the same order: first the owner or manager (Institut de France, ONF, industrial operator, road authority), then airspace (Beauvais, Charles-de-Gaulle, military sites), then data capture (ZICAD), and finally flight formalities (prior notification in a populated area, air navigation agreement where needed). Reversing that order means risking an aviation file for a flight the owner will refuse. For a company scheduling several missions in the region, our Hauts-de-France edition of the regulation guide brings together the zones, formalities and contacts for the five departments, and our regional guide on the Hauts-de-France covers the other sources of work, from the coast to the mining basin.
| Service in the Oise | Typical range (excl. VAT, 2026) |
| Photo/video shoot, half day, outside restricted areas | €450 to €900 |
| Beauvais CTR or Charles-de-Gaulle sector surcharge (preparation, agreement) | €250 to €700 |
| Roof inspection on a Seveso site (prevention plan included) | €1,000 to €2,400 |
| Multispectral forest health monitoring, up to 50 ha, two passes | €1,200 to €2,800 |
| Event or heritage-site images with the owner's consent | €700 to €1,600 |
These ranges assume a site outside military land, a declared operator and the owner's consent obtained; they exclude any ZICAD waiver and weather postponement days. Request a quote stating the municipality, the site owner or manager and the preferred date: airspace and ZICAD checks are done before any proposal.
Frequently asked questions
Can I film the Château de Chantilly with a drone?
Only with prior authorisation from the château, owned by the Institut de France, which forbids any overflight without its consent. Once that is obtained, the remote pilot files the prior notification for a populated area at least 10 working days beforehand and checks airspace, as the area is close to Charles-de-Gaulle's.
Is the former Creil air base still a sensitive site?
Yes. Its runways have been closed since 2016, but in 2024 the site became the Creil-Senlis Joint Services Hub, which hosts military intelligence bodies. It is not to be overflown, and the ZICAD layer must be checked before any shoot in the neighbouring municipalities.
Who authorises a drone flight in the Compiègne forest?
The state forest belongs to the State and is managed by the ONF, which must be asked to take off or operate in the forest; aviation rules apply on top. For the palace and its park, the contact is the Palace of Compiègne, a national museum.