Part 108 reaches OIRA, the last stop before routine BVLOS
The rule that decides whether drone delivery, pipeline inspection and long-corridor mapping become ordinary businesses or stay waiver-dependent hobbies is now in the hands of White House regulatory reviewers. It has been a long walk to get here.
Where it stands
On 10 July 2026 the FAA's final Part 108 rule was filed with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. That is the last significant procedural stop before a rule publishes in the Federal Register. OIRA's review of significant rules can take up to 90 days, which puts a realistic publication window in late 2026 or early 2027 rather than the July target the Unified Agenda had carried.
Getting to this point took three years and two missed deadlines. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 set a statutory deadline of January 2026 for a final BVLOS rule. A separate executive order in June 2025 directed the agency to propose and finalise within 240 days. The proposal itself, jointly published with TSA, landed on 7 August 2025 under docket FAA-2025-1908. Roughly 3,100 comments came back by the October close, an enormous response for a specialised aviation rule, and more than half of them concentrated on a handful of contested questions. The agency reopened comments on those specific topics in January 2026 for a two-week window. A 43-day government shutdown consumed much of the remaining schedule.
What actually changes
The core of Part 108 is a shift in who carries the burden of proof. Under Part 107, a remote pilot keeps the aircraft in visual line of sight and anything beyond that requires a waiver argued case by case. Part 108 replaces that with a standing framework: an organisation demonstrates trained personnel, documented risk controls and qualifying equipment once, and then operates inside an approved area rather than filing per-flight paperwork.
The structural pieces as proposed:
- Two approval tiers. Permitted Operations for lower-risk profiles, and an Operational Certificate for anything more demanding.
- Risk categories keyed to population density. Five bands, so flying a corridor across farmland is not held to the same standard as flying over a suburb.
- Area approvals replacing per-flight waivers. The single biggest operational change for anyone running a fleet.
- New named roles. An Operations Supervisor and a Flight Coordinator, formalising the org chart the FAA expects to see.
- Equipment mandates. Detect-and-avoid, Remote ID, continuous position tracking, and integration with UTM traffic management.
- Manufacturer-led airworthiness. Manufacturers demonstrate airworthiness rather than the FAA issuing a type certificate, a materially faster path than traditional certification.
- A weight ceiling of 1,320 pounds, far above anything in the consumer conversation.
The fight that is still live
The reopened comment window in January targeted the genuinely unresolved questions: ADS-B Out equipage, alternative electronic conspicuity devices, detect-and-avoid requirements and right-of-way. Those are not technicalities. Right-of-way in particular asks who yields when an uncrewed aircraft and a crewed one occupy the same low airspace, and the crewed aviation community and the drone industry gave the FAA very different answers. Expect the final text to differ from the proposal on at least some of these points. Nobody outside the agency knows how much.
If you fly, what to do now
- Do not wait for publication to build the paperwork. The safety management, training records and documented procedures Part 108 will ask for take months to stand up and are useful regardless.
- Budget a transition period. Industry expectation is 6 to 12 months between publication and requirements taking effect. That is planning time, not a reprieve.
- Keep flying under Part 107. Nothing about Part 107 changes when Part 108 publishes. Existing waivers stay valid on their own terms.
- Watch the equipment side. Detect-and-avoid and conspicuity mandates interact awkwardly with the FCC's restrictions on foreign-produced drones and components. Compliance-capable hardware from a supply chain that will still exist in three years is a narrower category than it was in 2024.
Sources
- Aviation Week, rolling business aviation briefs, 4 August 2026 — Part 108 filed with OIRA
- Airdata, Part 108 timeline and status, July 2026 — airdata.com
- DLA Piper, industry response to the Part 108 NPRM — dlapiper.com
- Federal Register, 90 FR 38212, Docket FAA-2025-1908, RIN 2120-AL82