Two Bermudians have made history in Alberta after launching the first sanctioned commercial drone flight in the Canadian province.

Connor Burns, part-owner of Skymatics, a Calgary-based offshoot of Bermuda Aerial, and EJ Burrows, the company’s managing director, flew a DJI S1000 drone some 400 feet in the air to capture footage of a major building site for promotional purposes.

Bermuda Aerial is known locally for shooting the aerial footage of the Island that appeared in the America’s Cup promotional film.

For their latest project, the company used the unmanned aerial vehicle to film the construction of two large city projects by architecture film Dialog — the Walterdale Bridge and a new downtown arena.

The flights marked the first time a Special Flight Operations Certificate had been issued to a drone company by Transport Canada to conduct operations in Alberta.

Mr Burns said he was still trying to find out whether it was the first in the whole of Canada.

The film was part of a promotional package and the footage will also help project designers to get a plan view.

The Skymatics team members had to battle for three months to get their application accepted due to Transport Canada regulations in place. They started the application process in October 2014 and filed upwards of 80 pages of paperwork during that time.

Mr Burns told The Royal Gazette: “Both parties were going back and forth negotiating the rules and regulations and both sides had a lot of questions which took a lot of time.

“We had to discuss things like how far away from the road we needed to be and what the flight ceiling (height limit) would be. They had wanted us to stay below 100ft but we needed to be above the cranes which were 300ft so we eventually got it up to 400ft.”

Unknown to Mr Burns, the anticipated flight in Edmonton was deemed newsworthy by local media, who turned up to report on the event.

“We didn’t realise it would get the media attention,” he said. “It was unexpected and fun and a good opportunity for us to increase awareness of our business in Canada.”

Dialog will be using the footage for business development purposes and it will then be sent to Edmonton-based partners Dialog Design, who will use it for promotional purposes.

Mr Burns and Mr Burrows started Bermuda Aerial in 2013 and Skymatics was later launched as an offshoot with Elliott Clease at the helm.

The Canadian arm of the business focuses on gas, oil and agriculture projects, and in November it won the Future Argo Challenge in Greece for its application of drones in the agricultural industry.

In Bermuda the focus is more on the entertainment industries. Mr Burns said he hoped that the company would continue to work with the America’s Cup.

“In Bermuda we are hoping to help the America’s Cup teams,” he said. “We would like to be filming the races and to work with the teams during training.”