Competent authority
Austro Control, the Austrian air navigation service provider, is the authority for uncrewed aircraft. It runs dronespace.at, which serves both as the registration desk and as the zone map.
Registration
⚠️ Registration is PAID here, which is rare in Europe. It costs under fifty euros for three years, where France, Switzerland or Poland provide it free. Anyone arriving with the habit of a free registration does not expect an invoice.
Three cases make registration mandatory, and the third does not exist in every state:
- the aircraft is over 250 g;
- it carries a camera or a personal-data sensor, even below 250 g;
- it can transfer more than 80 joules of kinetic energy on impact.
Remote pilot certification
Subcategories A1, A2 and A3 of the Open category apply, with European training and exams. A certificate obtained in another member state is valid here.
Operating categories
Open, Specific and Certified, under Regulation (EU) 2019/947. Ceiling of 120 m above ground, within visual line of sight.
Airspace and official resources
dronespace.at carries the geographical zone map. Austria keeps adding zones around critical infrastructure, and 2026 saw a restriction area come into force over central Vienna.
National specifics
The 80 joules are not a theoretical detail. The threshold targets energy transferred on impact, not mass: a light but fast aircraft can fall under it while a heavier, slower one does not. It is the kind of criterion people check only after being stopped.
The country is crossed by mountain flying and alpine military areas, whose perimeters are readable on dronespace and nowhere else.