Status updated September 2, 2026: FAA Part 108 remains a proposed rule. Earlier wording on this page included an expected final-publication date that passed without a final rule. This guide now distinguishes the NPRM from current operating authority.

Part 108 in one sentence

The FAA and Transportation Security Administration have proposed a new performance-based framework for routine low-altitude UAS operations beyond visual line of sight, along with supporting aircraft, operator, security, recordkeeping, and automated-data-service requirements.

The proposal was published in the Federal Register on August 7, 2025 under docket FAA-2025-1908. The docket later received a limited reopening of the comment period. As of this update, the Federal Register still lists the action as a notice of proposed rulemaking.

What Part 108 does not do today

Part 108 does not currently authorize a flight. Proposed language is not an issued permit, operating certificate, waiver, exemption, or COA. Operators must continue using the authority applicable to their present operation.

It is also too early to promise customers a precise compliance date, approved equipment list, transition period, or final means of compliance. Those details depend on final regulatory text and subsequent implementation material.

The framework FAA proposed

The NPRM seeks to replace part of the case-by-case BVLOS approval burden with repeatable authorization pathways. The proposal covers several connected layers.

Operating authorization

FAA proposes different authorization paths based on the scale and risk of the operation. Lower-risk operations would use a permit structure, while higher-risk operations would require an operating certificate and additional organizational oversight.

Aircraft and system qualification

The proposal describes performance-based acceptance and declaration mechanisms rather than treating every uncrewed aircraft like a conventionally type-certificated crewed aircraft. Exact final standards and accepted means of compliance remain implementation questions.

Separation and detect-and-avoid

A BVLOS operation needs a defensible method to manage traffic conflict. The NPRM addresses strategic deconfliction, conformance monitoring, electronic awareness, and detect-and-avoid responsibilities. Operators should treat every specific equipage outcome as proposed until final language and accepted standards are published.

Automated data services

The proposal includes a new framework for automated data service providers that could support strategic deconfliction and conformance monitoring. This matters because the safety case may depend not only on the aircraft and control station, but also on external services, data quality, availability, latency, and failure behavior.

Security, records, and reporting

FAA and TSA propose complementary requirements for operator responsibility, records, reporting, and security. Mature programs should expect traceability: who was responsible, which configuration flew, what supporting services were available, what failed, and what the organization did about it.

The operator-readiness stack

The safest preparation work is useful whether the final rule changes substantially or not.

1. Define the real ConOps

Document the aircraft, operating area, route structure, altitude, airspace classes, population exposure, crew positions, dispatch model, communications links, navigation sources, surveillance inputs, recovery sites, and mission-abort logic.

A vague ambition to “do BVLOS” is not a testable operation.

2. Build a current-authority matrix

For each planned profile, record the authority required today. Keep a separate column for proposed Part 108 assumptions and another for unresolved questions. This prevents a future-rule concept from leaking into current flight-release decisions.

3. Measure command-and-control performance

Collect availability, latency, coverage, handover, interference, and lost-link evidence in the actual operating environment. Define when the system continues, holds, reroutes, returns, or terminates.

4. Treat DAA as a system

Traffic surveillance, alerting, maneuver logic, communications, crew procedures, airspace assumptions, and contingency behavior have to work together. Buying one sensor does not produce a complete safety case.

5. Establish configuration control

Track aircraft hardware, payload, software, firmware, control-station configuration, navigation data, communications equipment, supporting services, and approved operational limitations. If the team cannot reconstruct the configuration, it cannot reliably explain performance.

6. Build training around decisions

Training should cover more than manipulation of controls. Crews need clear decision standards for dispatch, weather, degraded communications, surveillance uncertainty, airspace changes, emergency response, and maintenance discrepancies.

7. Prepare the record system

Maintenance, training, duty, flight, configuration, safety-reporting, and corrective-action records should be structured before scale. Retrofitting traceability after an incident is considerably harder.

Questions vendors should answer

A roadmap slide is not regulatory acceptance.

Questions leadership should answer

Current timeline

Verified milestones:

Official sources

The practical conclusion

Prepare the durable operating system now: ConOps, records, configuration control, training, communications evidence, DAA strategy, emergency procedures, and organizational accountability. Keep every proposed requirement labeled as proposed until the FAA publishes final text.

For a structured planning framework, see the Part 108 BVLOS Readiness Playbook.