Drone show collision at Orlando's Lake Eola seriously injures child

What happened

Sky Elements Drone Shows was hired to fly two holiday light shows over Lake Eola in downtown Orlando on the evening of December 21, 2024, as part of a free city event that drew about 25,000 people. The first show used 500 Uvify IFO drones launched from a small peninsula at the northeast corner of the lake.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, a handful of drones initially would not accept launch data, and the crew rebooted the fleet a few minutes before showtime. At about 6:35 p.m. the drones lifted off. They did not rise in even layers, and as they moved toward their first formation several collided and lost control. Many fell to the ground or into the lake. One could be seen on witness video heading toward the audience.

That drone’s flight recorder showed it climbed to about 138 feet, paused, registered an impact and then descended to the southwest, reaching 58 knots. It crossed the outer geofence, which is designed to cut the motors, and struck a child in the face and chest. The child was seriously injured; the family said he needed heart surgery. The pilot let the rest of the show continue, telling investigators he judged that safer than halting it. The 8 p.m. show was canceled.

The system involved

The Uvify IFO is a four-propeller light-show drone weighing a little over 2 pounds with its battery. In a show, each drone flies a pre-programmed path uploaded from control laptops, and one remote pilot in command oversees the whole swarm under an FAA waiver. The drones have no collision-avoidance sensors; separation depends on every aircraft starting from exactly the position the software expects.

The show software uses two virtual boundaries. A soft geofence sends a drone home to land. A hard geofence beyond it shuts off the motors.

Investigation and response

The FAA and the NTSB both investigated. News reports in late December 2024 said the FAA suspended Sky Elements’ authorization and that several drone shows elsewhere were called off.

The NTSB’s final report, published September 15, 2026, found that the show center uploaded to the drones was off by about 5 meters, which caused the software to assign drones to the wrong flight paths, and that the show heading was rotated by about 7 degrees. Only 498 of the 500 drones received the updated center position. Together the errors produced crossing paths at takeoff and moved the show about 59 feet toward the audience. A company change to the geofence margin made 12 days earlier had not been applied to the laptops used that night. The board named the remote pilot’s failure to position the show center over the drones as the probable cause, with the geofence setting, the wrong heading and the operator’s lack of any independent check of show settings as contributing factors.

Sky Elements said it agreed with the findings. It told the NTSB it now requires two certified pilots at each show, signed paper checklists, a rule that setup be complete 15 minutes before start, software locks on critical settings and a minimum 155-foot buffer between the geofence and spectators. The child’s mother sued the company and the City of Orlando; Fox 35 reported in September 2026 that the parties had reached a confidential proposed settlement awaiting court approval.

What is not established

Early statements from the Orlando Fire Department described one person taken to a hospital with a minor injury; the NTSB classified the injury as serious. Local reports put the start of the trouble at about 6:45 p.m., while the NTSB gives 6:35 p.m. The terms of the proposed settlement are confidential.