What Is FAA Part 107, and Do You Need It to Fly a Drone Commercially?

Part 107 is the section of the federal aviation regulations that covers small unmanned aircraft. In practice, it is the rule that separates flying a drone for fun from flying one as part of a business. If you want to get paid for drone work, or fly in support of a business, Part 107 is the framework you operate under, and the Remote Pilot Certificate is the credential that lets you do it.

Quick answer: FAA Part 107 is the rule set for commercial small drone operations, and the Remote Pilot Certificate is the credential it requires. You earn it by passing a 60-question Aeronautical Knowledge Test with a score of 70% or better. The certificate itself does not expire, but you must complete recurrent training every 24 calendar months to keep flying commercially.

This is the question we get asked most, usually by someone who already owns a capable drone and just got asked to shoot a roof, a listing, or a job site. Here is the straight version.

Recreational flying vs. commercial flying

The FAA cares about the purpose of the flight, not the size of your invoice. Flying strictly for your own enjoyment, with no business purpose attached, falls under the recreational rules. The moment the flight furthers a business in any way, it is a commercial operation and you need a Remote Pilot Certificate under Part 107.

That "in any way" catches more people than they expect. A few examples that are commercial, not recreational:

• Photographing a house for a real estate listing, even as a favor to the agent
• Documenting a roof so a contractor can write a bid
• Shooting footage you plan to sell, license, or use in your own marketing
• Flying to inspect your own company's property or equipment
• Posting aerial clips to a business social account to attract customers

If someone benefits commercially from the flight, plan on being certificated. It is not a gray area worth gambling on. The recurring mistake we see is treating "I did not charge for it" as the test. It is not the test. Intent and purpose are.

What the Remote Pilot Certificate actually requires

To earn the certificate, you take the FAA Aeronautical Knowledge Test in person at an FAA-approved testing center. It is 60 questions, multiple choice, and you need 70% to pass. There is no flight test, no check ride, and no requirement to demonstrate stick skills to an examiner. It is a knowledge exam.

The test draws from eight subject areas:

• Applicable regulations for small unmanned aircraft operations
• Airspace classification, operating requirements, and flight restrictions
• Aviation weather sources and the effects of weather on small unmanned aircraft performance
• Loading and performance
• Emergency procedures
• Crew resource management
• Radio communication procedures
• Determining the performance of small unmanned aircraft, plus airport operations and maintenance and preflight inspection procedures

Airspace and weather are where most people lose points. Reading a sectional chart is a genuine skill, and it does not come naturally just because you are good at flying. Neither does understanding why a hot, still afternoon in a valley changes what your aircraft can do.

You also need to be at least 16 years old, be able to read, speak, write, and understand English, and be in a physical and mental condition to safely operate a small unmanned aircraft. There is no medical certificate requirement, which is one of the biggest practical differences between this and manned pilot certification.

Part 107 vs. Part 61: two very different certificates

People conflate these constantly, usually because both get called "a pilot's license."

Part 61 is the certification pathway for manned aircraft pilots. It involves flight instruction, logged flight hours, a medical certificate, a written exam, and a practical check ride with a designated examiner. It takes months and costs orders of magnitude more than a drone certificate. It certifies you to operate an aircraft with people inside it.

Part 107 is a knowledge test. No flight hours, no instructor sign-off, no medical, no check ride. You study, you sit the exam, you pass, you get the certificate.

The overlap matters in one direction only: a current Part 61 certificate holder who has completed a flight review within the required window has a streamlined path to add small unmanned aircraft privileges through online training rather than the full knowledge test. Going the other way, holding Part 107 gives you no manned aircraft privileges at all.

The deeper point is that the two certificates test different things because they exist for different risks. Part 61 spends most of its effort on aircraft handling because the pilot is in the aircraft. Part 107 spends most of its effort on airspace, weather, and operational judgment, because your risk is not to yourself. It is to the people and aircraft around you.

What happens if you fly commercially without it

This comes up more than it should, usually framed as "who is actually going to know?"

A few realities. First, the FAA can and does issue real penalties for unauthorized commercial operations, and enforcement is not theoretical. Second, the practical exposure usually shows up long before any regulator does:

• Insurance. If you have an incident during an uncertificated commercial flight, expect a coverage fight. Your general liability policy is unlikely to help you with an operation you were not legally permitted to conduct.
• Clients. Any competent GC, property manager, or commercial client asks for your certificate number and proof of insurance before letting a drone over their site. Not having one costs you the work.
• Liability. If something goes wrong, whether you were operating legally is the first question everybody asks, and the answer shapes everything that follows.

The certificate is inexpensive relative to almost any other professional credential. The downside of skipping it is wildly out of proportion to what it costs to just go get it.

How hard is the test, really, and how long does prep take?

Honest answer: it is a passable test that punishes people who wing it.

The questions are not written to trick you, but they assume you can read a sectional chart, interpret a METAR or TAF, reason through a loading and performance problem, and apply the operating limitations from memory. If you have any aviation background, a lot of this is review. If you do not, you are learning a new visual language from scratch.

What "average" prep looks like in practice varies with background more than with intelligence:

• Some aviation exposure (a pilot, an air traffic background, military aviation): often a few focused sessions to map what you know onto the specific Part 107 rules.
• No aviation background but comfortable studying: commonly a couple of dedicated weekends, or two to three weeks of evenings.
• No aviation background and studying in scraps of time between jobs: longer, and the risk is not difficulty, it is losing momentum and re-learning the same chart symbols four times.

The single best predictor of a comfortable pass is whether you spent real time on airspace and weather instead of grinding regulation questions because they feel more answerable.

If you want the full study plan, we wrote it up step by step in how to pass the Part 107 test on the first try, including what the 60 questions actually look like and how to know you are ready before you pay the fee.

The certificate does not expire. Your currency does.

This trips people up because it works differently from a driver's license. Your Remote Pilot Certificate does not have an expiration date on it. What you have to maintain is currency: recurrent training every 24 calendar months.

Miss that window and nothing gets confiscated. You simply cannot exercise the privileges of the certificate for commercial work until you complete the training and are current again. The recurrent requirement is not a re-test at a testing center, and the sensible way to treat it is as a calendar item you set a reminder for the day you pass, not something you discover you have missed when a client asks.

What happens the moment after you pass

Passing the exam is a milestone, not the finish line. There is a short list of things that turn a test result into a legal operation:

1. Get the certificate issued. You complete the application process and receive your Remote Pilot Certificate. Keep it accessible during operations. 2. Register the aircraft under Part 48. Drones flown under Part 107 are registered with the FAA, and the registration number must be displayed on the exterior of the aircraft. Registration renews periodically. 3. Sort out Remote ID. Your aircraft needs to meet Remote ID requirements, either by being a standard Remote ID aircraft or by using a broadcast module. Check what your specific airframe does before you fly a job, not after. 4. Build a preflight habit. Airspace check, weather check, NOTAMs, battery and airframe inspection, and a plan for what you do if the aircraft misbehaves. This is the part the test cannot make you do. 5. Get airspace authorization when you need it. A lot of profitable work sits in controlled airspace. Knowing how to request authorization, and how long it typically takes, is the difference between booking a job and turning it down.

What Part 107 lets you do, and what it does not

The certificate is permission to operate commercially within a set of operating rules, not a blanket clearance to fly anywhere. The baseline rules cover things like keeping the aircraft within visual line of sight, operating during permitted times, respecting altitude limits, and not flying over people or moving vehicles except as the rules allow.

Several of those limits can be waived, and some operations require authorization rather than a waiver. Controlled airspace near an airport is the common one: you request authorization, and a lot of profitable work sits inside those boundaries. Operations like flying beyond visual line of sight are a different and much heavier lift.

The useful mental model is that Part 107 gives you a standard envelope. Most commercial work fits inside it comfortably. The jobs that do not are the ones where knowing the waiver and authorization process turns into a competitive advantage, because plenty of operators simply decline them.

Why we teach it the way we do

Passing a multiple-choice test and being safe on a client's property are two different accomplishments. Plenty of courses will drill you on question banks until the exam is beatable. That gets you a certificate, and then leaves you standing in a parking lot next to a controlled airport wondering what to do next.

Meridian is run by working pilots and drone operators who fly commercial jobs every week. We teach the test, and then we teach the part that comes after it: reading the airspace you are actually standing in, deciding when not to fly, and running a job so the client gets usable documentation and nobody has a bad day.

If you want to study on your own schedule, the self-paced course is in the store for $129.99. If you would rather work through it live with someone who can answer follow-up questions in real time, one-on-one coaching is $69.99 an hour. They are separate options, so take whichever fits how you learn.