Our annual aerial inspection program provides a bird’s eye view of our network and allows us to identify faults, potential defects and trees that are too close and causing a risk to our network.
Aircraft patrols are an important part of our overall network maintenance program and bushfire mitigation strategy.
2025 aerial inspection program:
Our 2025 aerial inspections will be conducted from Friday 07 February – Friday 21 February, weather permitting.
We will cover roughly around 761 kilometres of Transmission lines, High Voltage and Bushfire prone areas that encompass the electricity network.
The helicopter and plane with will fly between 1000 - 2500 feet above rural areas and at times, may venture into urban areas when following our 132kV Transmission lines.
Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology is used to determine the distance between powerlines and trees with minimal hovering.
The suburbs we’ll be flying over this year are:
We will predominately be flying over public land however there may be instances where it appears we are flying over private property as homes back onto nature reserves and bushfire prone catchments.
See the image below for more information.
Flight map:
Each year we have a flightradar24 map which will show you live tracking of our aerial inspection helicopter and plane when they are flying. Both will appear on the map and the identification names are VH-NLG and VH-OAS. It takes-off and lands at the Canberra Airport.
What to expect from our aircraft:
Weather permitting, the patrols generally fly between working hours (8am and 4pm). They start early so they can get two flying sessions in a day and avoid potential bad weather in the afternoon. We try to avoid flying on weekends, however if time has been lost due to bad weather, it may be required.
Both aircraft have noise reduction modifications, and our LiDAR technology means it does not need to hover or turn around a lot.
What we do after the inspections:
Vegetation management work is prioritised on a scale from immediate response to reactively clear to no action required/monitor. Using the information gathered from our patrols, we will prioritise vegetation trimming in this way to ensure the continued safety and reliability of our network.
Check trees in your yard:
In the ACT, homeowners and occupiers are responsible for keeping trees clear of powerlines on their property. You don’t have to wait for us to send you a notification to trim your trees – we recommend you check trees on your property to check they’re not too close to powerlines, or if they might be getting close. For more information on vegetation management in the ACT, see our Trees and Powerlines page.
An example of the LiDAR images the aircraft takes. The purple lines indicate our powerlines, and the green areas are trees.