What Is Part 108? The FAA’s BVLOS Rule in Plain English

If you spend any time around commercial drone people, you have heard “Part 108” said with the same tone people use for tax reform or a new stadium. Everyone agrees it is coming. Nobody agrees on when. And most explanations of it are written for lobbyists, not for a pilot trying to figure out if it changes anything about the roof inspection they have booked for Thursday.

Quick answer: Part 108 is the FAA’s rulemaking for routine beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations. Today, flying past what you can see requires a hard to get waiver under Part 107. Part 108 would replace that case by case waiver grind with a standing set of rules. As of late summer 2026 it is still not law: the proposal ran its comment periods, and the final rule text has been under White House review since July 10, 2026. We track every move on our Part 108 status page.

Here is the plain version of what it is, where it actually sits, and what it means for someone flying commercially under Part 107 right now.

The problem Part 108 exists to solve

Part 107 has one rule that shapes the entire industry: you must be able to see the aircraft with your own eyes, unaided, at all times. Visual observers can extend your bubble a little. That is it.

For a roof inspection or a real estate shoot, line of sight is fine. You are never more than a few hundred feet from the drone anyway. But the biggest commercial uses of drones do not fit inside that bubble. Delivering packages across a suburb. Inspecting forty miles of power line. Patrolling a pipeline. Monitoring crops across thousands of acres. Every one of those jobs requires the aircraft to go where the pilot cannot see it.

Today, the only legal path is a Part 107 BVLOS waiver: a thick application, a safety case, months of FAA review, and no guarantee. Big players like Zipline and Wing have them. A two person inspection company in Santa Clarita is not getting one. The result is an industry where the most valuable work is legally reserved for whoever can afford a regulatory team. Part 108 is supposed to fix that by making BVLOS a normal, rule based operation instead of a special favor.

What the proposed rule would actually do

The FAA published the proposed rule on August 7, 2025, under the title “Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations.” The important shift is that it is performance based. Instead of telling you exactly what equipment to bolt on, it tells you what outcomes you have to achieve, like detecting and avoiding other aircraft, and lets manufacturers and operators figure out how.

The proposal lays out different operating tiers depending on where and how you fly, with requirements scaling up as operations get denser or closer to people. It contemplates things like operating over people under defined conditions, organizations running fleets rather than one pilot and one drone, and a bigger role for automated systems and airspace coordination services. The two fight zones in the comments were electronic conspicuity, meaning how drones and manned aircraft electronically see each other, and right of way, meaning who yields to whom when a drone and a crop duster meet at 300 feet.

That second fight is not academic. Low altitude airspace already has traffic: helicopters, ag aircraft, pipeline patrol planes, banner towers. A BVLOS rule that gives drones presumptive right of way makes pilots of manned aircraft understandably unhappy. A rule that makes drones yield to everything could make long range operations nearly impossible in practice. This is the argument that has slowed the whole thing down.

Where it actually stands right now

This is the part most coverage gets sloppy with, so here is the timeline straight from the public record:

• August 7, 2025: the proposed rule (the NPRM) is published in the Federal Register.
• October 6, 2025: the first comment period closes after the FAA declines to extend it.
• January 28, 2026: the FAA reopens comments, narrowly, on electronic conspicuity and right of way.
• February 11, 2026: the reopened window closes.
• July 10, 2026: the rule lands at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the White House’s regulatory review office, and the public review record lists its stage as “Final Rule.”

That last step matters. Some trade coverage in July described the rule as a proposal moving forward. The OIRA listing says the opposite: what is under review is the final rule text. OIRA review is the last substantive gate before a rule gets published in the Federal Register and becomes real. The FAA has also blown past its own statutory deadline for finishing this rule, and the Department of Transportation has said the delay is deliberate, which tells you the right of way fight is still being refereed.

What nobody outside that room can tell you is the publication date. It could be months. Rulemakings have died in OIRA before, and they have also emerged quickly. Anyone selling you certainty either way is guessing.

What it changes for a working Part 107 pilot

Honestly? Not much this month, and potentially a lot over the next few years.

This month, nothing. Until a final rule publishes, BVLOS without a waiver is still illegal, full stop. Your Part 107 certificate, your waivers, your airspace authorizations all work exactly the way they did yesterday. Do not ground your business waiting, and do not buy “Part 108 ready” anything from anyone.

Over the next few years, the change is real. When routine BVLOS becomes legal, the economics of inspection, delivery, agriculture, and mapping all shift. Work that needed a pilot standing in a field every two miles becomes one operator covering real distance. That cuts both ways for small operators: it opens up contract work that was previously locked behind waiver programs, and it also means the big, well funded players can finally scale into markets that used to belong to whoever was local.

The smart preparation is boring and free. Fly a lot under the rules that exist now. Keep clean flight logs and maintenance records, because BVLOS frameworks are built on documented operational history. Learn airspace properly, because the pilots who understand the sectional chart are the ones who will understand the new operating tiers on day one. And get good at the work itself, the inspection reports and the deliverables, because when flying far gets easy, the value moves to whoever knows what to do with the data.

Go deeper

Part 108 spreads responsibility across an operator organization, not one remote pilot. Read our detailed guide to the proposed Part 108 Operations Supervisor role, including operational control, final safety authority, qualifications, handoffs, and the split from tactical Flight Coordinator duties. For the hands-on side, see our guide to the proposed Part 108 Flight Coordinator, including the 5-hour make-and-model rule and how 1:1 and 1:many ratios work. Compare a current in-sight mission with the proposed BVLOS path in our Part 107 vs Part 108 guide. If your operation may need BVLOS authorization later, the proposed operating permit vs certificate guide walks through fleet, ground-risk, application and oversight choices. For the current federal timeline, use the Part 108 status tracker.

The bottom line

Part 108 is the most important drone rulemaking since Part 107 itself, and it is genuinely close, and it is not here. The final rule text has been sitting in White House review since July 2026, the comment fights over right of way are the reason it is slow, and until it publishes, the waiver system is still the only door to BVLOS.

The certificate that matters today is the same one that mattered in 2016. If you are waiting for Part 108 to start, you are going to spend a year watching other people build the hours and the client lists that will make them the obvious operators when the new rule finally lands.

Common questions

Is Part 108 the law yet?

No. As of late summer 2026, the rule has finished its public comment rounds and the final rule text went to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review in July 2026. Until a final rule is published in the Federal Register, nothing changes for operators.

Can I fly beyond visual line of sight with a Part 107 certificate today?

Only with a waiver. Part 107 requires you to keep the aircraft within visual line of sight unless the FAA grants you a specific BVLOS waiver, and those are not quick or easy to get for routine work.

Will Part 108 replace Part 107?

No. Part 107 stays the base certificate for commercial small drone work. Part 108 adds a new framework on top of it for beyond visual line of sight operations, with its own requirements that the final rule will spell out.

Should I wait for Part 108 before starting a drone business?

No. The certificate that pays the bills today is Part 107, and every serious operator working toward BVLOS scale is building hours, documentation habits, and client relationships under Part 107 right now. Waiting means starting from zero whenever the rule lands.