Your flights are not civil aviation. Your tool should know it.
What a state aircraft is
The distinction is older than the drone. Since 1944, the Chicago Convention has placed aircraft used in military, customs and police services outside the scope of international civil aviation. Each State then sets its own rules for those flights.
European law restates the principle. Regulation (EU) 2018/1139, which grounds EASA's remit, excludes from its scope aircraft carrying out military, customs, police, search and rescue, firefighting, border control, coastguard or similar activities.
Which is why the question arises in the same terms far beyond Europe: the framework differs from one country to the next, the principle does not.
The uniform does not decide. The mission does.
This is the part most often misread. The European text does not exclude organisations, it excludes activities: those carried out under the control and responsibility of a State, in the public interest, by a body vested with public powers or on its behalf.
The same airframe, flown by the same crew, can therefore fall under two regimes depending on what it does that day. A tool that attaches the status to the organisation gets it wrong half the time; it has to attach it to the flight.
What the status changes, and what it does not
Does not apply
- Compliance assessment against the European regulation: open and specific categories, standard scenarios, operational declarations.
- The remote pilot certifications required by that same regulation.
- EASA geo-zones, which do not bind a state aircraft.
Still applies
- National air traffic rules, and those of your own service.
- Controlled airspace and coordination with air traffic control.
- The qualifications your service requires of its crews.
In short: the status removes an assessment grid. It removes neither the shared sky nor the responsibility.
How Waypoint360 handles it
The status is declared on the flight. Where it applies, the app stops assessing compliance with the European regulation instead of showing a verdict with no object, and says so on screen so nobody hunts for an impossible entry.
The geo-zone map stays, with its notice: knowing what you are flying over keeps its value even when the constraint does not bind you. Listed certifications stay visible, presented for what they are: requirements of the European regulation, which does not apply here.
The rest of the work is unchanged: preparation, weather, routes, crew, preparation file, logbook, report.
Which teams
Services carrying out those missions: police and gendarmerie, civil protection and firefighting, search and rescue, customs, border control, coastguard.
And local authorities whose some missions fall under the same regime, without all their flights doing so.
Sources
The facts on this page come from the texts themselves, not from commentary on them.
- Regulation (EU) 2018/1139, Article 2(3)(a), scope
- Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago, 1944), Article 3, civil and state aircraft
Texts consulted on 14 September 2026.