SORA for drones: the Specific category risk assessment

SORA stands for Specific Operations Risk Assessment. It is the method by which a civil aviation authority decides whether your operation can be authorised, and on what terms.

It applies as soon as you leave the Open category without falling into a ready-made standard scenario.

What it is not

It is not a form, and that is the first disappointment. A SORA is not filled in — it is argued. You describe an operation, you establish the risk it creates, you show what you put against that risk, and the authority judges the strength of the demonstration, not the good intentions behind it.

Nor is it a European text. SORA comes from JARUS, a grouping of civil aviation authorities, which published it recommending worldwide application. EASA adopted it as an acceptable means of compliance with Article 11 of Regulation (EU) 2019/947. The UK runs its own variant, UK SORA, and other authorities have taken it up — Canada, Australia.

⚠️ Practical consequence: a SORA accepted somewhere does not carry elsewhere. The method is shared; the decision stays national.

How it reasons

It is a ten-step process starting from the description of the operation, then separating two risks that have nothing in common:

• ground risk — what the aircraft can do to people if it falls. It depends on mass, energy, and above all on what lies underneath;
• air risk — the chance of meeting another aircraft. It depends on the airspace crossed, not on your machine.

Both are reduced by mitigations: bounding the ground area, moving away from an aerodrome, adding a parachute, restricting hours. What remains after mitigation combines into a single indicator, the SAIL — Specific Assurance Integrity Level.

SAIL decides everything else

SAIL is not a score. It is the level of demand applied to what follows: the higher it is, the more you must prove that your organisation, your procedures and your equipment hold up.

It drives compliance with 24 operational safety objectives — the OSOs. Each must be met with increasing robustness as SAIL rises: a statement is enough at the bottom of the scale, third-party verified evidence is expected at the top.

This is where the real cost of a file is decided. Two operations that look alike on site can demand three pages from one operator and three months from another — because the SAIL differs.

There is no such thing as a "SORA template" — and that is measurable

It is one of the most frequent searches on the subject, and it rests on a misunderstanding worth clearing up.

A SORA file describes one operation, on one site, with one aircraft. What gives it value — the description of the operation, the mitigations chosen, the evidence provided — is precisely what no template can hold. Copying a file accepted elsewhere produces the most common defect of all: a demonstration that does not match what will actually be done.

What does carry over: the structure of the reasoning, the operating procedures, and the operations manual that holds them. That is where a management tool saves time — not by filling the file in for you.

EASA and the UK: same method, two decisions

EASA adopted SORA as an acceptable means of compliance for Member States. The UK, outside the European framework, runs UK SORA — same JARUS origin, separate authorisation regime.

An operator working on both sides of the Channel therefore prepares two files, even for an identical operation.

What to take away before starting

1. The area decides more than the drone. Flying over a controlled ground area changes the risk far more than a lighter model.
2. Mitigating costs less than proving. Every measure that lowers SAIL spares you objectives to demonstrate.
3. The file is alive. A SORA describes one operation. Changing site, altitude or aircraft can void it.
4. A standard scenario, where one exists, avoids all of this. In Europe, STS-01 and STS-02 cover two frequent cases by simple declaration — with no SORA.

Going further

• Drone regulations in France — where the Specific category sits in the national framework.
• Drone pilot certificates in Europe — the theoretical certificate is never enough on its own.
• Beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) — the case that most often leads to a SORA.