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10 chapters
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about 16 min read
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free
Part 107 is easier to hold than its length suggests, because almost every rule answers one of three questions. Who may fly (a certificated remote pilot), what may fly (a registered aircraft under 55 pounds), and where and how may it be flown? The operating limits are the third group. They exist to keep an uncrewed aircraft inside airspace nobody else is using: low, slow, in sight, clear of cloud, lit after dark, away from people. When a limit looks arbitrary to you, ask which of the three it belongs to and what collision it prevents. Orientation for study, not flight instruction, and not affiliated with the FAA. Every figure here was read from 14 CFR parts 107, 48 and 89 as published on 2026-09-01; regulation drifts, so check the current text before you rely on a number.
Each chapter opens with the short version. Tap one to read the detail.
What Part 107 governs, and the weight that decides it
~2 min
Part 107 covers civil small unmanned aircraft systems. "Small" means under 55 pounds at takeoff including everything on board, so the payload counts, and adding one can push your operation out of the rule entirely.
Part 107 governs civil small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and "small" is a weight: less than 55 pounds on takeoff, including everything on board or otherwise attached.
That last clause is the one people miss. The weight is not the airframe's spec sheet. It is the aircraft as it actually leaves the ground, with battery, camera, gimbal, and any cargo.
Part 107 also does not reach everything that flies. Other regimes govern recreational operations, public aircraft operations, and larger unmanned aircraft, and the part is explicit about what it leaves to those rules. The boundary matters to you because the answer to "is this legal?" often turns on which regime you are in rather than on any single limit.
Concretely: an airframe of 49 pounds ready to fly, fitted with a 6-pound survey sensor, leaves the ground at 55 pounds. Less than 55 is the definition, so nothing in Part 107 applies to that flight. A 5-pound sensor puts it inside the line by a pound. §107.3 counts "everything that is on board or otherwise attached", so you do the arithmetic on the day, with the payload fitted.
Rule: weigh the aircraft as configured for the flight, not as sold — the 55-pound line is measured at takeoff with the payload attached.
Becoming, and staying, a remote pilot
~2 min
To get a remote pilot certificate you must be at least 16, able to read and speak English, and fit to fly by self-assessment, with security vetting behind issuance. You keep it current with recurrent training every 24 calendar months.
The certificate has a short eligibility list. You must be at least 16 years of age, able to read, speak, write and understand English, and in a physical and mental condition to operate safely. That last one is a self-assessment. There is no medical certificate requirement as there is for crewed aviation, which places the judgment on you as the pilot.
Security vetting by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) sits behind issuance, which is why a certificate does not arrive the moment you pass a test.
Currency is the part most often misremembered. You maintain it by recurrent training every 24 calendar months: training, not a retake of the original test. "Calendar months" means the clock runs to the end of the month, not to the day.
The certificate and identification must be in your physical possession when operating. §107.7 names who may demand to see them: the FAA, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the TSA, and any federal, state or local law-enforcement officer.
Concretely: three shorter clocks run beside the 24-month one. Fail the initial test and the earliest retake is 14 calendar days later (§107.71). Pass, and a temporary certificate covers up to 120 calendar days while the permanent one is issued (§107.64). Change your address and you have 30 days to notify the FAA before the privileges lapse (§107.77). None resets any other.
Rule: eligibility is a one-time gate; currency is a repeating one. Track the 24-calendar-month clock separately from anything else, because nothing else reminds you.
The operating limits, and the airspace logic behind them
~2 min
Maximum 400 feet above ground, 100 miles per hour (87 knots) groundspeed, 3 statute miles visibility, and 500 feet below / 2,000 feet horizontally from clouds. Together they keep your aircraft in air that crewed traffic is not using.
Altitude: 400 feet above ground level. The exception matters in practice: you may fly higher when within 400 feet of a structure, up to 400 feet above that structure's top. That exception exists so tower and antenna inspection is possible without a waiver.
The other three limits: groundspeed of 100 miles per hour (87 knots) maximum, visibility of 3 statute miles from the control station, and cloud clearance of 500 feet below and 2,000 feet horizontally.
The logic joins them. Crewed aircraft generally operate above 500 feet outside the airport environment, so a 400-foot ceiling plus cloud clearance keeps the two apart vertically. The visibility minimum keeps you able to see and avoid. The limits are a separation scheme, not arbitrary caution.
Visual line of sight is the anchoring requirement. You, as remote pilot in command, or a visual observer must be able to see the aircraft unaided, apart from corrective lenses. First-person-view goggles alone do not satisfy it.
Concretely: inspecting a 600-foot tower, you may climb to 1,000 feet above the ground while within a 400-foot radius of it. Drift 500 feet sideways and the ceiling is 400 again. The same subpart settles night without a waiver: anti-collision lighting visible for 3 statute miles, and a pilot whose initial test or recurrent training came after 6 April 2021 (§107.29). You may dim the lighting but never extinguish it, and civil twilight (30 minutes before official sunrise and after official sunset) needs it too.
Rule: read each operating limit as one axis of separation — vertical, lateral, visual — and the set becomes one idea instead of five numbers.
Registration attaches to the aircraft, not the pilot
~2 min
Registration is a separate obligation from certification, with its own eligibility conditions. A Part 107 aircraft is registered individually and marked with its number; exclusively recreational aircraft may share one registration across several airframes.
Two different things get registered in this field, and conflating them is the common error. You hold a remote pilot certificate; the aircraft holds a registration. Neither substitutes for the other.
Registration has its own eligibility conditions covering age and citizenship or residency. The unique identifier must be legibly displayed on an external surface of the aircraft and stay affixed for the whole flight (§48.205).
The distinction worth carrying: if you fly an aircraft under Part 107, it is registered individually, one aircraft to one registration. An aircraft flown exclusively recreationally may operate under a single registration number covering several airframes.
Concretely: a mapping firm flying three aircraft under Part 107 holds three certificates, one per aircraft, each expiring three years from its own issue date (§48.100). The owner's weekend quad, flown exclusively under the recreational exception, sits on one certificate covering every recreational aircraft that person owns (§48.105). Sell a firm aircraft and the registry must be updated within 14 calendar days (§48.115); the certificate ends on transfer and the buyer registers afresh.
Rule: register the aircraft, certificate the pilot, and check which regime you are flying under before deciding whether one number can cover more than one airframe.
Broadcast identification, and when the duty starts
~2 min
Remote identification requires your aircraft to broadcast identifying information from takeoff through shutdown, with a successful pre-flight self-test as the precondition for flying at all. The duty tracks the registration requirement.
Remote identification is the mechanism by which an unmanned aircraft in flight can be identified from the ground. Its rules live in their own part rather than inside Part 107, which is why you can study the operating rules and miss it.
Two mechanics matter more than the technology. First, which aircraft must broadcast: the duty tracks the registration requirement rather than being a separate category to memorize. Second, when: broadcast runs from takeoff through shutdown. It does not start at arrival on site, and it does not stop when the aircraft lands mid-session.
The precondition is the part that grounds flights. A successful pre-flight self-test is required before the aircraft may fly. If the self-test fails, that is not a warning you note and proceed past; it is a stop.
Concretely: an older aircraft with no built-in Remote ID flies legally with a broadcast module attached, and §89.115 writes the trade. The person at the controls must be able to see the aircraft at all times, a condition a Part 107 line-of-sight waiver does not lift. The module broadcasts the take-off location where a standard aircraft broadcasts the control station's position (§§89.305, 89.315). If the broadcast stops mid-flight, land as soon as practicable. Only inside an FAA-recognized identification area may an aircraft with neither fly, still within sight.
Rule: treat the self-test like any other no-go item — you check it before flight, and it can end the flight before it starts.
Flight over people, and what "participating" actually means
~2 min
The default is no flight over a human being. The exceptions are narrow: the person is directly participating, is under a covered structure, is inside a stationary vehicle, or your aircraft meets one of the defined operational categories.
Start from the prohibition, because the exceptions only make sense against it: do not fly over a human being.
Four things lift it. The person is directly participating in the operation. The person is under a covered structure. The person is inside a stationary vehicle that can offer reasonable protection. Or the aircraft qualifies under one of the defined operational categories, which set requirements on injury potential and, for some, on exposed rotating parts.
"Directly participating" is narrower than intuition suggests, and it is the concept most often stretched. A client who asked for the footage is not a participant merely by being present and consenting. Participation means having a role in the operation itself.
Note the word stationary. A vehicle in motion does not qualify, which is a different question from the separate rule on operating from a moving vehicle.
Concretely: picture a listing shoot over a garden party. Every guest is a human being under §107.39, and none is participating, under a roof, or in a parked car. Without a category, you may not pass over any of them for any length of time; the FAA's gloss is that "over" means any part of any person. A Category 1 aircraft (0.55 pounds or less on takeoff, no exposed rotating part that would lacerate skin, §107.110) may. Sustained flight over an open-air assembly (hovering, circling, passing back and forth, not one transit) then adds a Remote ID condition, and a Category 3 aircraft may never fly over such an assembly (§107.125).
Rule: identify each person under the flight path individually and name which exception covers them — if you cannot name one, the flight path is the thing that has to change.
Two different permissions, and the limits that are never waivable
~2 min
A waiver authorizes deviation from specific listed sections; an airspace authorization permits flight in controlled airspace. Some requirements are outside the waiver list entirely, so no safety case you write can reach them.
These are two mechanisms with different jobs, and asking for the wrong one is a common delay.
A certificate of waiver authorizes deviation from an enumerated list of sections: the operating rules for which the FAA has decided a sufficient safety case can substitute. An airspace authorization is separate. It permits operation in controlled airspace, which is not a deviation from a rule so much as permission required by one.
The structural fact worth knowing is that the waivable list is closed. Requirements outside it cannot be waived at all, however good your mitigation, and carrying hazardous material is the clearest example. Operating from a moving vehicle is on the list (§107.25), but with a carve-out written into the list itself. No waiver of it, or of visual line of sight, will be issued to carry another person's property for compensation or hire (§107.205).
Concretely: a bridge inspection needs the aircraft under the deck, out of your sight. Line of sight (§107.31) is on the list, so that is a waiver application, and the FAA's guidance is blunt that one naming no hazards and no mitigations is disapproved for insufficient information. The same job in Class D airspace needs an airspace authorization through the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) or DroneZone. Waivers now go through a different portal, the Aviation Safety Hub. Carrying the contractor's parts across the river for a fee from a moving boat is not an application at all: §107.205 refuses that waiver by name.
Rule: before you write a waiver request, check whether the section you want relief from is on the enumerated list — if it is not, no amount of mitigation will reach it.
What the knowledge test covers, and how to close its gaps
~2 min
The test spans regulations, airspace and charts, weather, loading and performance, emergency procedures, crew resource management, physiology, maintenance and airport operations. Your report gives coded subject areas, which is what makes re-study targetable.
The knowledge areas are broader than "the rules", and the breadth is the point: several of them are aviation subjects that have nothing to do with drones specifically.
In §107.73's order, they are: the regulations; airspace classification, operating requirements and flight restrictions; aviation weather sources and weather effects; loading; emergency procedures; crew resource management; radio communication procedures; determining aircraft performance; the physiological effects of drugs and alcohol; aeronautical decision-making and judgment; airport operations; maintenance and preflight inspection; and operation at night, added in 2021. That is thirteen areas, and if you study only "the rules" you have prepared for one of them.
The Airman Certification Standards organize this into areas with referenceable codes, and your knowledge test report returns those codes. That is the practical mechanism most candidates waste. A failed or weak area comes back identified, so your re-study is targetable rather than a re-read of everything.
If you already hold a Part 61 certificate and meet the flight review requirement, you have a training-course path rather than the initial test.
Concretely: a candidate who fails waits 14 calendar days to retest (§107.71) and returns with a report whose subject codes say where the marks went. The private pilot beside them, current on a flight review, never sits the test. They complete the §107.74 course, whose eight areas omit airspace, radio, physiology, decision-making and airport operations.
Rule: use the report's subject codes to drive your re-study, and remember that being able to locate a rule in the regulations is a tested skill — memorizing every number is not.
The recreational exception, and the conditions that keep it
~2 min
Limited recreational operations have a statutory exception with conditions attached: recreational purpose, community-based safety guidelines, visual line of sight, and the rest. Breach one condition and your flight is a Part 107 operation being flown without a certificate.
The recreational route is not "the rules do not apply". It is a statutory exception, available to you only while its conditions are met.
Those conditions include flying strictly for recreational purposes, in accordance with community-based safety guidelines, and within visual line of sight. You must also give way to crewed aircraft, obtain authorization before operating in controlled airspace, and hold proof of having passed the recreational safety test.
The failure mode is specific and worth stating plainly: purpose decides the regime. Accepting payment, or flying to produce something for a business (even your own, even without payment), makes the operation non-recreational. The flight does not become illegal because a rule was broken mid-air. It was a Part 107 operation from the start, conducted by someone who may hold no certificate for it.
Concretely: photographing a friend's house to help sell it is a Part 107 flight even unpaid. The FAA's non-recreational examples are photos to help sell a property or service, a high-school game shot for the school's website, and volunteering to survey a coastline for a non-profit. Its page says compensation is not what decides the regime, and that in doubt you assume Part 107. Under the exception the registration line is the same 0.55 pounds (§48.15); the proof you carry is completion of The Recreational UAS Safety Test (TRUST), not a certificate.
Rule: decide the regime before takeoff by asking what the flight is for, and remember that the answer is not changed by how the aircraft is flown.
Carriage: what may be carried, and the one categorical bar
~2 min
Carrying hazardous material under Part 107 is prohibited outright, with no waiver available. Carriage for compensation is separately constrained, and any external load must not shift or degrade controllability.
Carriage divides into what is forbidden and what is merely limited.
Hazardous material may not be carried at all, and this is one of the requirements no waiver reaches. The hazard classes are broader than most people assume: aerosols, flammable liquids, corrosives, compressed gases. Spare lithium batteries carried as cargo raise the question in a way the aircraft's own installed battery does not.
Everything else is limited rather than barred. You must secure an external load so it cannot shift, and it must not adversely affect the flight characteristics or controllability of the aircraft. Dropping an object is permitted only if done without creating an undue hazard; do it carelessly and the separate careless-or-reckless prohibition applies.
Payload also counts toward takeoff weight, so carriage can push your operation past the 55-pound line and out of Part 107 altogether. And carrying another person's property for compensation is constrained in ways that carrying your own equipment is not, including across a state boundary.
Concretely: a roof survey asks the aircraft to lift a can of marking spray to the ridge. Check anything a client hands you against the definition §107.36 borrows from 49 CFR 171.8. An item that meets it cannot go up, and §107.205 lists no waiver for §107.36. A clip of shingles for the roofer is a legal external load if the preflight confirms it is secure and does not change how the aircraft handles (§107.49).
Rule: ask three questions of any payload — is it hazardous, does it change how the aircraft handles, and whose property is it — because each has a different rule behind it.
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