Part 108 is discussed in a lot of places as though it were already the rule. It is not. There is no Part 108 in Title 14 — the numbering runs straight past it, and today every beyond-visual-line-of-sight operation in the United States still happens under a waiver or an exemption.
What follows is where the rulemaking actually is, what it would change, and the one proposed sentence that matters most to anyone currently holding or seeking a § 107.31 waiver.
Status as of 13 July 2026. Proposed rule published, comment periods closed, no final rule. The final rule was sent to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for Executive Order 12866 review on 10 July 2026 and is pending. Nothing in this article is in force. Check for movement before you rely on any of it.
The paper trail
| Date | Event | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| 16 May 2024 | Congress orders the rulemaking — § 930 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, adding 49 U.S.C. 44811 | Pub. L. 118-63 |
| 16 Sept 2024 | Statutory deadline for the proposed rule — missed | 49 U.S.C. 44811(a) |
| 7 Aug 2025 | NPRM published, "Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations" — joint with TSA, 180 Federal Register pages | 90 FR 38212, Docket FAA-2025-1908 |
| 6 Oct 2025 | 60-day comment period closes; approximately 3,100 comments per the FAA | 90 FR 38212 |
| 28 Jan 2026 | Comment period reopened for 14 days, limited to electronic conspicuity and right-of-way | 91 FR 3695 |
| 11 Feb 2026 | Reopened period closes; request to extend denied | 91 FR 5880 |
| 10 July 2026 | Final rule received at OIRA, pending review | RIN 2120-AL82 |
The proposed rule arrived roughly ten and a half months after Congress said it should. The FAA's own regulatory agenda entry had targeted July 2026 for the final rule, and that target passed without publication.
Worth understanding why one narrow reopening happened, because it tells you where the fight is. The FAA reported that more than half of the roughly 3,100 comments touched the right-of-way proposal — which would give Part 108 aircraft presumptive right of way over manned aircraft except in specified circumstances, including where the manned aircraft broadcasts ADS-B Out or an approved alternative. Manned aviation objected. The January reopening was about that and electronic conspicuity, and nothing else.
The sentence that matters to Part 107 pilots
Most coverage frames Part 108 as an expansion, and for large operators it is. For an individual Part 107 pilot the more consequential proposal is subtractive.
From the NPRM, verbatim: "FAA proposes to amend Sec. 107.1 to remove the applicability of part 107 to the operation of UAS beyond the VLOS of the operator. Since part 108 will be the rule set that governs the operation of UA BVLOS of the operator, it no longer makes sense to provide waivers to the part 107 rules for this type of activity. Any relief sought should be done under the auspices of part 108."
In other words, the proposal would take beyond-visual-line-of-sight out of Part 107 entirely, adding it to the list of things Part 107 does not apply to — alongside carriage of property for compensation or hire. The § 107.31 waiver would stop being the route because there would be nothing left to waive.
That waiver is still live today. As of the current eCFR edition, § 107.31 is in force and § 107.205(c) still lists it as waivable, which we cover in our guide to what the FAA will and will not waive. Note the carve-out that already exists there: no § 107.31 waiver will be issued to allow carriage of another's property for compensation or hire. Part 108 is, among other things, the FAA's answer to that gap.
The NPRM anticipates that operations currently run under waivers and exemptions — agriculture, package delivery, surveying, flight testing — would transition to Part 108 as their exemptions expire. No dates are attached to that.
What Part 108 would permit
All of this is proposed. None of it is available.
- Routine BVLOS without waivers or exemptions, at or below 400 feet AGL, flown from pre-designated access-controlled locations, with the FAA approving an operating area rather than individual flights.
- Aircraft up to 1,320 pounds including payload, in three weight tiers — 55, 110 and 1,320 pounds.
- Airworthiness acceptance rather than certification, assessed against FAA-accepted industry consensus standards instead of a traditional airworthiness certificate.
- Operations over people, but not over large open-air assemblies, with five categories keyed to population density.
- A new Part 146 creating Automated Data Service Providers — approved third parties supplying the traffic-management and strategic-deconfliction services the whole model depends on.
- Remote ID broadcast and lighting requirements throughout.
Access would come in two tiers: an operating permit for lower-risk work with caps on fleet size and scope, which the FAA says it could issue promptly, and an operating certificate for higher-risk operations, requiring full review, a safety management system and a training programme.
Two new roles appear — operations supervisor and flight coordinator — and per the FAA's own fact sheet, "Neither position would require holding an FAA-issued airman or remote pilot certificate." Because this is a joint rulemaking with the TSA, covered personnel would also face security threat assessments.
The scale of what exists today, from the NPRM's economic analysis, is a useful corrective to the noise: nine operators hold exemptions for BVLOS above 55 pounds, roughly 230 more hold waivers indicating BVLOS below 55 pounds, and two entities hold letters of authorisation for data-service work. This is a rule written for an industry that is currently very small.
What this means for you right now
Concretely: nothing changes yet. Part 107 is unaffected until a final rule publishes with an effective date, and no effective or compliance dates exist — the NPRM proposed none.
If you fly under Part 107, the sensible posture is to keep flying under Part 107, keep § 107.31 in mind as a live waiver route while it lasts, and treat any product marketed to you as "Part 108 ready" with the scepticism due to a claim about a rule that has not been written yet.
If your business plan depends on BVLOS or on delivery, the honest position is that the pathway is proposed and its most contested provision was reopened for comment as recently as this February. Plan for the rule you have, not the one in the docket.
What we could not confirm
- Any current target date for the final rule. The only official target was the regulatory agenda's July 2026, which has lapsed. We found no FAA press release, statement or newsroom item about Part 108 dated after the 10 February 2026 Federal Register notice. Dates circulating in trade press are not traceable to a primary source we could locate.
- The true comment count. The FAA's published figure is approximately 3,100. Regulations.gov data mirrored on federalregister.gov reports figures three orders of magnitude higher against documents in this docket. We could not reconcile the two from a primary source and are not going to guess at an explanation — mass-mail campaign, de-duplication, data error are all plausible and none is verified. The FAA's own figure is the citable one.
- Effective and compliance dates. None exist. They will be set in the final rule, and searching the NPRM for proposed compliance dates returns nothing.
- Which statutory deadline governs the final rule. The statute keys sixteen months off actual NPRM publication, giving December 2026. The agency's own agenda entry records the deadline as January 2026, computed from the statutory NPRM date, and is internally inconsistent about it. We are reporting the contradiction rather than picking a side.
- What survives OIRA review. Final rules routinely differ from proposals, and the right-of-way provision is the most likely thing in this one to have moved.
- This is a summary of a 180-page proposal, not a substitute for reading it. If you are building a business on Part 108, read the NPRM and speak to an aviation attorney.
The short version
Part 108 does not exist yet. The proposal published 7 August 2025 at 90 FR 38212, comments closed that October, the right-of-way provision was contentious enough to force a narrow reopening in early 2026, and the final rule went to OIRA on 10 July 2026 where it remains. Congress's deadline for the proposal was missed by about ten months. When it does land it would allow routine BVLOS below 400 feet for aircraft up to 1,320 pounds, under permits or certificates, with airworthiness acceptance instead of certification and a new class of data service providers underneath it. And it would remove BVLOS from Part 107 altogether, which means the § 107.31 waiver you might be planning around has a shelf life — but that shelf life is not yet a date, and until it is, the waiver is the only route there is.
Everything Part 108 would build on — airspace, operating limitations, right-of-way, Remote ID — is examinable under Part 107 today. Start free with the Flycensed iOS app and its 485+ practice questions, or work through the regulations and airspace chapters in the Part 107 Complete Study Guide ($14.99).
Flight-bag gear
Affiliate links — we may earn a commission from purchases at no extra cost to you. We only list gear we would actually put on a job.
- VIFLY Drone Strobe Light — Conspicuity is the thread running through the whole Part 108 argument, and it is already required for night work under Part 107.
- Ground Control Point Markers, 24in (6-pack) — Surveying is one of the named permit categories; GCPs are what make the output worth selling.
- Smatree Professional Backpack for Mavic 4 Pro — Pre-designated operating sites mean carrying a full kit to a fixed point rather than working from the boot of a car.