Competent authority
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an agency of the Department of Transportation, is the single authority for uncrewed aircraft in the United States. Federal law owns the airspace: no state, county or city may regulate it. What local government does keep is control of the ground, and many municipal parks and beaches use exactly that to ban take-off and landing from their land.
⚠️ There is no equivalence with Europe. A European A1/A3, A2 or CATS certificate is worth nothing here, and the reverse is equally true. The two systems do not recognise each other: flying your own aircraft in the United States means going through the American route from the start.
Registration
Registration is done on the FAA DroneZone portal, costs five dollars and lasts three years.
⚠️ The threshold depends on the purpose of the flight, not only on weight, and this is the most common trap:
- Recreational flying: registration starts at 250 g (0.55 lb), as in Europe. Below that, nothing.
- Under Part 107, that is any professional use, every aircraft is registered whatever its weight. A 249 g aircraft exempt on Sunday must be registered on Monday if it flies for a client.
A recreational registration belongs to the person and covers all their aircraft; a Part 107 registration belongs to each aircraft. The number must be displayed legibly on the outside.
Remote ID
Any aircraft that requires registration must broadcast its remote identification. The requirement has been fully enforced since 16 March 2024, with penalties announced from 1,100 dollars per violation.
Three routes to compliance: an aircraft with built-in Remote ID, a broadcast module added to one without it, or flying exclusively inside a FRIA (a recognised identification area, typically a declared model flying field).
Remote pilot certification
Recreational flying: the TRUST test (The Recreational UAS Safety Test) is mandatory before any outdoor flight. It is free, online, takes around thirty minutes, cannot strictly be failed, and the completion certificate must be available on request.
Professional flying: the Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate is obtained through a knowledge test at an approved centre, from 16 years old. It is kept current by free online recurrent training every 24 months.
⚠️ The regime follows the flight, not the pilot. A Part 107 holder flying for pleasure falls back under recreational rules, TRUST included. This is not administrative trivia: the two regimes do not allow the same operations.
Operating categories
There is no Open, no Specific and no Certified: the American architecture is not that of European regulation (EU) 2019/947, and reasoning does not carry across.
- Part 107: the ordinary professional framework. Ceiling 400 feet above ground (about 122 m), visual line of sight, one aircraft per remote pilot.
- Waivers: what Part 107 forbids can be authorised case by case, on application.
- Flight over people: four categories, indexed on aircraft mass and injury risk, with distinct design requirements.
- Beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS): today, one waiver per operation. Part 108, which is meant to open BVLOS without an individual waiver, was proposed in 2025 and had not come into force at the date this sheet was checked.
Airspace and official resources
Flying in controlled airspace requires authorisation, granted within seconds through LAANC (Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability) via an approved application, or on application to the FAA where LAANC does not reach.
The B4UFLY app gives the status of an area before take-off. On top of that sit permanent restrictions around sensitive sites and TFRs (Temporary Flight Restrictions), which are frequent and sometimes issued at very short notice: a presidential movement, a major sporting event, a wildfire.
National specifics
The local patchwork is real. Federal law holds the airspace, but access to the ground is decided locally. A national park simply bans take-off and landing on its land, and that ban appears on no aeronautical chart.
Foreign pilots are not excluded. A non-resident can sit Part 107 and fly, but registering an aircraft owned by a foreign national goes through a separate declaration. Prepare it before leaving, not on arrival.