Part 108: What the FAA's Proposed BVLOS Rule Would Change

Part 108 is a proposed rule. It is not law, no part of it is in effect, and as of 29 August 2026 no operator anywhere in the United States holds or can claim Part 108 authority. The FAA sent the draft final rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on 10 July 2026, where it remains under review. Nothing changes for anyone until a final rule is published in the Federal Register and reaches its effective date.

Part 108 is the most consequential drone rulemaking since Part 107, and coverage of it has badly outrun accuracy: articles online, including at least one dated April 2026, announce that the FAA has "finalized" Part 108. They are wrong. This guide covers what the FAA proposed in the 7 August 2025 NPRM, where the rule stands, what would change if it is adopted as written, and what to do now. Every provision below is labeled as proposed, and where sources conflict this guide says so.

Where the Part 108 BVLOS rule actually stands as of August 2026

The rule is at OIRA — the last stop before publication for a significant rule, and not a rubber stamp. Review can run up to 90 days and is extendable; from the 10 July 2026 submission the nominal 90-day mark lands around 8 October 2026. A realistic publication window is late 2026 to early 2027, assuming no substantive rework, which given the adverse comment on right-of-way is not a safe assumption. Publication is then followed by an effective date and almost certainly staged compliance dates. The gap between "final rule published" and "you can fly under it" will be months.

Check the status yourself, in about ninety seconds. Search federalregister.gov for "Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations." Today it returns exactly two documents: the NPRM of 7 August 2025 and the comment-reopening notice of 28 January 2026. The docket is FAA-2025-1908 on regulations.gov, and OIRA status sits at reginfo.gov under RIN 2120-AL82. Distrust any article announcing a final rule that cannot give you a Federal Register citation.

The real NPRM runs roughly 731 pages at 90 FR 38212, Notice No. 25-07 — a joint FAA/TSA rulemaking, RIN 2120-AL82 and 1652-AA80.

The Part 108 rulemaking timeline, with dates

Congress ordered this rule, the White House ordered it again, and every deadline has been missed.

Both final-rule deadlines deserve a word, because you will see each quoted alone as if settled. § 44811(c) says the rule is due "not later than 16 months after publishing the proposed rule" — from 7 August 2025, that is 7 December 2026. Congress, in its own letter to the FAA, read the scheme as 20 months from enactment: 16 January 2026, already passed. Both readings are defensible, and neither carries a self-executing consequence. A missed deadline does not create authority for anyone to fly.

What Part 108 would do: rule-based BVLOS below 400 feet

The core idea is a shift from permission-by-exception to permission-by-rule. Today every routine BVLOS operation runs on a case-by-case instrument: a Part 107 waiver, or for qualifying agencies a Part 91.113 certificate of waiver. Part 108 would replace that with a standing framework you qualify for and then operate under.

Verbatim from the FAA's posted NPRM, operations "would be conducted primarily below 400 feet AGL (unless authorized by the Administrator to go higher)," and the rule contemplates "Low Altitude Shielded Areas (within 100 feet of a structure or critical infrastructure as defined in 42 U.S.C. 5195c)."

The shielded-area number is widely misreported. The FAA's own text says 100 feet of a structure. Much of the trade press says 50 feet. Use 100, and treat an article saying 50 without a citation as a signal about the rest of its sourcing.

The proposal names eight operation categories: package delivery, agricultural operations, aerial surveying, civic interest, unmanned aircraft operations training, flight test, demonstration, and recreational operations. "Civic interest" is the one public-safety readers should note — the FAA describes it as covering wildfire recovery, wildlife conservation, and public safety.

Critically, Part 107 does not go away. Part 108 would sit alongside it, with conforming amendments rather than replacement. If you fly VLOS commercial missions, Part 107 remains your rule.

Part 108 permits vs. certificates, and the population density categories

An operating permit is the lighter instrument, for smaller-scale operators, available across all eight categories. An operating certificate is required for larger aircraft, more aircraft, or denser population, and covers only four: package delivery, agricultural operations, aerial surveying, and civic interest. A certificate demands materially more — a Safety Management System, an FAA-accepted training program, validation testing, and enhanced reporting.

Why there is no threshold table on this page. The numeric cutoffs separating a permit from a certificate — aircraft counts, weights, density limits — are published by multiple trade outlets in versions that conflict with one another. Rather than pick the most-repeated set and present it as fact, this guide omits them. Read the thresholds out of the final rule text, not a summary.

Ground risk is measured by population density Categories 1 through 5 derived from LandScan data — from Category 1, more than one statute mile from any cell containing 10 or more people, to Category 5, within half a mile of 2,500 or more people. Sources agree on this framing but none quotes the rule text, so treat the figures as well-sourced secondary reporting, not verified regulatory language.

Who runs a Part 108 operation: new roles, no remote pilot certificate

Part 108 proposes organizational rather than individual accountability. There would be no remote pilot certificate in the Part 107 sense. The FAA would approve the operator, and the operator would answer for its people. Two named roles carry the operation:

• The Operations Supervisor holds final authority and is the FAA's point of contact.
• The Flight Coordinator provides tactical oversight and may supervise multiple aircraft at once.

The detail most summaries skip: a flight coordinator cannot manually fly the aircraft. The role issues high-level commands to an automated system — supervision of autonomy, not stick-and-rudder work. For any mission that depends on a human taking direct control, that is a functional loss, not a paperwork detail.

The proposal also applies TSA Level 3 Security Threat Assessments to operations supervisors, flight coordinators, and "covered persons," with package-delivery operators additionally required to maintain a TSA security program. This drew heavy opposition on cost and scope grounds and may change.

Which aircraft would qualify, and the foreign-manufacturer restriction

The proposed envelope is generous: maximum takeoff weight 1,320 lb including payload, maximum wingspan 25 ft, maximum ground speed 87 knots. Airworthiness would run through a means of compliance / declaration of compliance process rather than type certification.

One clarification, because the mistake is common: Part 108 does not use kinetic-energy thresholds. The 11 and 25 foot-pound figures people cite belong to Part 107 Subpart D operations over people. Part 108's ground-risk metric is population density.

The sleeper issue is who built your drone. Airworthiness acceptance would be available only to manufacturers in the United States or in countries holding bilateral airworthiness agreements with the US. Those agreements do not currently exist for unmanned aircraft. Read literally, that would make the vast majority of drones now flying in American commercial and public-safety fleets ineligible. Commenters, including public-safety agencies, said so directly.

Stack that against the American Security Drone Act, the December 2025 FCC Covered List actions, and state phase-out deadlines, and fleet eligibility decides whether Part 108 is usable at all. If you are buying aircraft in the next 18 months, ask the vendor whether it intends to pursue Part 108 airworthiness acceptance, in writing.

Part 146 and Automated Data Service Providers

Part 108 would not arrive alone. The NPRM proposes a new 14 CFR Part 146 creating Automated Data Service Providers (ADSPs) — FAA-accepted third parties supplying the services that make deconflicted BVLOS traffic work at scale:

• Strategic deconfliction: coordinating intended flight paths among operators before flight so they do not converge.
• Conformance monitoring: watching whether an aircraft is flying the path it declared, and flagging when it is not.
• Airspace and supplemental data services.

ADSP services would be mandatory in controlled airspace and over the denser population categories, optional elsewhere. Operators could self-provide if they meet the criteria — something large operators are expected to pursue and small ones are not.

The comments aired the obvious concern: a new recurring cost line and a new dependency. A small operator would be buying a subscription it cannot easily leave mid-season, in a market that does not yet exist and whose pricing nobody can quote.

The right-of-way fight, and why it is the most likely thing to change

If one provision gets rewritten before publication, this is it. The proposal would give Part 108 operators presumptive right-of-way over crewed aircraft. Verbatim from the FAA's reopening notice, the exceptions are:

"except: (a) when the manned aircraft is broadcasting location data through Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) Out or an approved alternate electronic conspicuity (EC) device...; (b) in Class B or C airspace; (c) when the manned aircraft is taking off or landing at an airport or heliport; or (d) over Category 5 population areas."

Read that plainly. A crewed aircraft below 400 feet AGL, outside Class B or C, not taking off or landing, over anything less dense than a Category 5 area, and not transmitting ADS-B Out, would have to yield to an unmanned aircraft. That describes a great deal of legal, everyday low-altitude flying: powerline patrol, agricultural application, pipeline survey, an air ambulance approaching an off-airport scene.

The FAA's own figure: more than half of the approximately 3,100 comments received on the NPRM discussed the right-of-way proposal in some capacity. That is why the agency reopened comments in January 2026 on electronic conspicuity and right-of-way, posing seven questions about alternate EC devices.

The opposition is unusually unified. A joint Manned Aviation Statement of Alignment signed by AOPA, VAI, NATA, EAA, NAAA, BFA, AAA, USPA, Pilot Institute, and UAFA argued that manned aircraft "must always maintain right of way over UAS" in all airspace, that the FAA's premise that crewed aircraft do not routinely operate within 400 feet of structures is erroneous, and that the 100-foot buffer between 400-foot UAS and 500-foot manned operations is insufficient. VAI cited more than 40,000 annual flight hours flown within 400 feet of structures by utility helicopter operators alone. Metro Aviation found more than two-thirds of UAS were detected only within a one-mile range, leaving a crew under 30 seconds to react. ALPA and AOPA formally oppose the provision.

One more wrinkle: Part 108 aircraft would be required to receive ADS-B but prohibited from transmitting ADS-B Out — a one-way visibility gap in which the drone sees the helicopter, the helicopter does not see the drone, and the rule still gives the drone right-of-way. That asymmetry is the crux of the objection, and it is hard to see the provision surviving unchanged.

Part 108 vs. Part 107 for public safety agencies

The honest answer: for most agencies, Part 108 probably changes nothing — at least not at first. Practitioners who have read the full NPRM report that public-safety agencies will be able to continue operating under Part 91 waivers, and that BVLOS permissions for public safety will likely keep residing in Part 91 COAs and CoWs for now. Treat that as informed reading of the proposal, not a verified statutory carve-out — the codified § 108.1(b) exclusions were not legible in available versions of the text.

The "civic interest" category is the on-ramp if an agency wants in. But five concrete reasons keep most where they are:

1. The 91.113 waiver already works, and it is fast. Processing runs two to three days, validity is 48 months, with no NOTAM requirement and no monthly reporting. Nothing in Part 108 is lighter.
2. The SMS and organizational-approval burden is disproportionate for a five-pilot program.
3. Fleet ineligibility, if the foreign-manufacturer restriction survives.
4. Flight coordinators cannot manually fly. For DFR programs and tactical work, that is a real operational downgrade.
5. TSA Security Threat Assessments add an administrative layer COA operations do not carry.

The sharpest public-safety comment in the docket comes from Irving (TX) PD, which wrote that Part 108's "unnecessarily onerous operating restrictions and compliance costs would make it challenging or even impossible to conduct the BVLOS operations," and that the proposal would "hinder, rather than support, the ability to use drones in support of public safety." Law enforcement commenters also asked for carve-outs permitting immediate, no-notice launch for fugitive apprehension and missing-person searches — a direct collision with a framework built on deconfliction filed in advance.

What Part 108 would mean for commercial operators

For commercial BVLOS, Part 108 is the point of the exercise. Package delivery, agricultural application, infrastructure inspection and large-area survey are all gated behind individual waivers with long queues and, for 107.31, the lowest approval rate of any waiver type. A standing rule with published criteria is a better regime to build a business on.

First, there is no published transition mechanism for existing Part 107 BVLOS waiver holders. If you hold a 107.31 waiver, the proposal does not say whether it converts, runs to expiration alongside Part 108, or must be rebuilt as a permit or certificate application. Assume you will apply fresh.

Second, the NPRM proposes conforming changes to Part 107 that touch operators who never intend to fly under Part 108: updates to certain areas within controlled airspace at or below 400 ft AGL; a technical amendment removing the airspace waiver at 107.205(h); updates to BVLOS and compensation-or-hire rules; Aviation Safety Reporting Program updates; a prohibition on interference with a remote pilot in command; right-of-way changes except over water; and ADS-B Out equipment and use requirements. Read those when the final rule lands.

Frequently asked questions

Is FAA Part 108 final?

No. As of 29 August 2026 Part 108 exists only as a proposed rule. The NPRM was published 7 August 2025 at 90 FR 38212, and the draft final rule went to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on 10 July 2026, where it is still under review. Articles claiming the FAA has finalized Part 108, including one dated April 2026, are inaccurate. Confirm status at federalregister.gov.

When will the Part 108 final rule be published?

The realistic window is late 2026 to early 2027. OIRA review of a significant rule can run up to 90 days and is extendable; from the 10 July 2026 submission, 90 days lands around 8 October 2026. Publication is then followed by an effective date and likely staged compliance dates, so operations would begin months later. The statutory deadlines have already been missed.

Does Part 108 replace Part 107?

No. Part 107 remains in force and would stay the framework for standard commercial small-drone operations. Part 108 would add a separate, rule-based pathway for beyond visual line of sight flight, primarily below 400 feet AGL. The NPRM does propose conforming amendments to Part 107, including removing the airspace waiver at 107.205(h) and adding ADS-B Out requirements.

Would Part 108 require a remote pilot certificate?

No. Part 108 proposes organizational rather than individual accountability, with no remote pilot certificate equivalent. The FAA would approve the operator, which would then answer for its personnel. Two roles are named: an Operations Supervisor holding final authority and serving as FAA point of contact, and a Flight Coordinator providing tactical oversight. A flight coordinator could not manually fly, only issue high-level commands.

Can public safety agencies use Part 108?

They likely could, through the proposed "civic interest" category, but most would have little reason to. Agencies flying as public aircraft operators can continue using Part 91 certificates of waiver, which process in days, run 48 months, and carry no NOTAM or monthly reporting burden. Part 108 would add a safety management system, TSA security threat assessments, an inability to manually fly, and possible fleet ineligibility.

What is an ADSP under the proposed Part 146?

An Automated Data Service Provider is an FAA-accepted third party supplying strategic deconfliction, conformance monitoring, and airspace data services to Part 108 operators, under a proposed new 14 CFR Part 146. ADSP services would be mandatory in controlled airspace and over denser population categories, with self-provision allowed for qualifying operators. Comments raised concerns about recurring cost and vendor lock-in.

Why is the Part 108 right-of-way rule so controversial?

The proposal would give Part 108 operators presumptive right-of-way over crewed aircraft, with only four exceptions: ADS-B Out or approved electronic conspicuity broadcast, Class B or C airspace, takeoff and landing, and Category 5 population areas. The FAA reports more than half of roughly 3,100 comments addressed it, and ten manned-aviation organizations signed a joint statement opposing it.

What to do now

Nothing about Part 108 requires you to change how you fly this quarter. It justifies five specific moves.

1. Keep flying under the authority you hold. Part 107 waivers and Part 91 certificates of waiver are the operative instruments, and will be for months after any final rule publishes.
2. Public safety: do not pause COA or waiver work. If a 91.113 CoW/A or a legacy COA renewal is in your plan, file it. Waiting for Part 108 costs real capability for a rule that may never apply to you.
3. Build the paperwork early. SMS documentation, a written training program with records, and defensible flight and maintenance logs are the long lead item under Part 108 and useful under every existing authority. This is the one preparation that is not speculative.
4. Press your vendors. Ask in writing whether they intend to pursue Part 108 airworthiness acceptance. A vendor with no answer in 2026 is a procurement risk in 2028.
5. Assume the right-of-way provision may change. Do not build a concept of operations or a business case that depends on presumptive right-of-way over crewed aircraft surviving.

Whatever framework you end up under, the flight records, currency tracking, and incident documentation the FAA will ask for have to live somewhere more durable than a spreadsheet. Re-check the docket at regulations.gov under FAA-2025-1908 and the OIRA status under RIN 2120-AL82 monthly, and treat anything you read about Part 108 without a Federal Register citation as unverified.