The aircraft is in pieces. Somebody is asking whether you have to tell the FAA, and the honest answer in the moment is usually that you are not sure — which is a bad state to be in with a clock already running.
The rule is short enough to hold in your head, and the thing it turns on is the opposite of what most people assume.
The part that catches people: damage to your own aircraft is never what triggers the report. You can destroy a $4,000 drone in an empty field and owe the FAA nothing. Chip a stranger's windscreen and you may well have ten days to file.
What § 107.9 actually says
The section is titled Safety event reporting — it was renamed from accident reporting in December 2022, which is why older guides use different language for the same obligation. It requires the remote pilot in command to report to the FAA, no later than 10 calendar days after the operation, any operation of the small unmanned aircraft involving at least:
- Serious injury to any person, or any loss of consciousness; or
- Damage to any property other than the small unmanned aircraft, unless the cost of repair including materials and labour does not exceed $500, or the fair market value of the property does not exceed $500 in the event of total loss.
Read the property limb carefully, because it contains two different $500 tests and which one applies depends on whether the thing survived.
| Situation | The test | Reportable? |
|---|---|---|
| Property damaged and repairable | Cost of repair, materials and labour | Yes, if repair exceeds $500 |
| Property destroyed outright | Fair market value of the property | Yes, if that value exceeds $500 |
| Your own small unmanned aircraft, any damage | Excluded by the wording of the rule | No |
| Serious injury, or any loss of consciousness | No monetary threshold at all | Yes |
Labour is in the repair test explicitly, which matters more than the materials in most real cases. A cracked panel that costs $180 in parts and $400 to fit is a reportable event. People who mentally price the part and stop there get this wrong.
And note the phrasing on injuries: serious injury or any loss of consciousness. The second is not qualified by severity. Someone who is knocked out briefly and gets up fine is inside the rule.
Ten calendar days, from the operation
The clock runs from the operation, not from when you found out about the damage, not from when someone complained, and not from when an insurer got involved. Calendar days, so weekends and holidays are inside the count.
That is a tighter window than it sounds when the damage assessment is disputed. If a property owner is getting quotes and the first one comes back at $460 and the second at $900, you are still inside the same ten days. Where the figure is genuinely uncertain and could plausibly land above the threshold, the cautious course is to file rather than to wait for certainty you may not get in time.
What the rule does not do
It does not require you to report every crash. There is no general duty to tell the FAA that you had a bad day. Absent injury or third-party property damage over the threshold, a destroyed aircraft is your problem alone.
It does not turn a report into an admission. Filing is a regulatory obligation, not a concession of fault. It also does not displace § 107.19 remote pilot in command responsibility or § 107.23 careless or reckless operation — those apply on their own terms regardless of whether anything was reportable, and neither of them can be waived. We set out what can be waived in our guide to Part 107 waivers.
It does not settle anything civil. Whether you owe the property owner money is a separate question from whether you owe the FAA a report, and the $500 threshold has nothing to do with liability.
Before it happens: the boring part that decides how this goes
Everything about a post-incident ten days is easier if the flight was documented while it was going well. None of this is required by § 107.9, and all of it is worth doing:
- Record the operation — date, time, location, aircraft, crew, and the airspace authorisation number if you were in controlled airspace under LAANC.
- Photograph damage at the scene, including the wider context, not just the broken thing.
- Get contact details for the property owner and any witnesses before anyone leaves.
- Write your own account the same day, while you still remember the sequence rather than the story you have told three times since.
- Keep the aircraft and its logs. Do not repair it or wipe flight data while a report is pending.
Drone insurance is a genuinely separate matter from any of the above, and worth having independently of the reporting rule.
What we could not confirm
- We could not confirm from § 107.9 itself how "serious injury" is defined. The regulation uses the term without defining it inside the section, and the definition applied in practice comes from elsewhere in the aviation rules. If an injury is anywhere near the line, treat it as reportable and take the definitional question to the FAA's UAS Support Center.
- The rule says the report must be made "in a manner acceptable to the Administrator" and does not name a form or a portal in the regulatory text. We could not confirm the current submission channel from a primary source; check the FAA's UAS pages before filing rather than relying on any article's link.
- We could not confirm how, or whether, this obligation interacts with any separate NTSB reporting duty. They are different bodies with different rules and we are not going to guess at the overlap.
- Fair market value in the total-loss test is not defined in the section. Whose valuation governs a disputed figure is not something we can source.
- This is not legal advice. If there is an injury, a serious sum of money, or a dispute about fault, an aviation attorney is the right call and the ten-day clock is a reason to make it early.
The short version
Ten calendar days from the operation, and only two things start the clock: a serious injury or any loss of consciousness, with no monetary threshold at all; or damage to property that is not your own aircraft, above $500 measured as repair cost including labour, or as fair market value if the thing is a total loss. Your own drone is excluded however comprehensively you destroyed it. Labour counts, which pushes more incidents over the line than people expect. And when the number is genuinely uncertain, remember that the deadline does not pause while you find out.
Reporting obligations, operating limitations and pilot responsibility are all examinable, and they are the sections people skim. The Flycensed iOS app is free and covers them across 485+ practice questions, or work through the regulations chapters in the Part 107 Complete Study Guide ($14.99).
Flight-bag gear
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- Rite in the Rain Weatherproof Copier Paper (letter) — Contemporaneous notes written at the scene are worth more than a reconstruction a week later, and the weather at the scene is rarely cooperative.
- ASA VFR Kneeboard (KB-1) — Keeps the flight log on the aircraft rather than in your memory.
- Scotch Laminating Pouches, letter, 5 mil (100) — A laminated incident checklist in the case is the cheapest insurance on this list.