Episode 9: Choosing Your Path: Part 107 vs Part 91 for DFR

All right. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining today for episode nine here of our Regulatory Updates for Public Safety webinar series. So it's been a couple months. The last webinar I did was back in March.

And at that time, we were talking about multidrone approvals and operations.

At that time, the waivers had just started getting issued.

And since then, as kind of just a side note to start the webinar, we've got about sixty agencies now with approvals, which is awesome to see.

And even better is many of those agencies are now starting to incorporate multi drone operations in just day to day ops. So it's been awesome to see that and see that kind of new concept growing, but that's not what we're here to talk about today.

Today is going to be about kind of choosing a path and the differences and similarities between Part ninety one and Part one hundred seven.

And really the focus of the webinar here today will be on these public safety waivers which are mostly streamlined at this point and how these, you know, today there's essentially a waiver for both regulations. There's a public safety streamlined waiver for Part ninety one and for Part one hundred seven.

And so we're basically gonna just take the hour to kind of talk about how they're the same, how they're different, so things like what are the eligibility requirements, how do you get them, what are the similarities and differences in the actual approvals themselves, and like what that might mean for your actual operations.

And then there's we'll talk about some other additional kind of considerations.

These would be extra approvals kind of on top but things like airspace authorizations to flying zero grids, multi drone, we will come back to that as well.

So without further ado, let's kind of get into the material here. But first, I just kind of want to have a little fun and do kind of test you all to see see who's watching. So I'm gonna kind of put up a graphic, two graphics, and I I'll give you, like, fifteen seconds. I just kinda want you all to look and see if you can spot the differences here.

So let's go with the first one and I'm just going to kind of count the ten in my head and then we'll reveal the answer.

Okay so at first glance it's kind of like the Spider Man meme like wait. These are both Kawas actually. They're both waivers. They both look the same cover letter wise. They're both signed by the FAA.

But this one, hopefully, you kinda spotted that the difference here is one is a part ninety one waiver. One is a Part one hundred seven waiver. So that's really the main difference. There's also a small difference in the number of provisions each waiver has, and we'll talk more about that later about like why those numbers are different.

But yeah, one is a part ninety one waiver, one's a part one hundred seven waiver. So that's the main difference here. So let's do another one.

Let's kind of count to ten again in my head here.

Alright. I probably should have had a little live poll going, but we just want to keep it simple today. So here is the difference for this one.

So mostly the same verbiage here and this is one of the provisions out of the Part one hundred seven and ninety one waivers. One kind of uses the term responsible person and then it speaks to Part one hundred seven regulations.

One uses the term operator and speaks to part ninety one regulations. Everything else is identical though between the two really.

Alright so let's do one more here.

Okay. And this one's a little bit shorter. So this one's kind of a trick question. Another meme. I like the office.

It's kind of the corporate needs you to find the difference between the two and they're the same. And I realize my head's blocking that, but they're the same provision.

Number is different, but that's effectively a meaningless difference at this point. The verbiage is the same. You have to have FCC approved transmitters flowing under these waivers. And this screenshot is one is Part one hundred seven, one is Part ninety one again.

So throughout the hour here ahead of us, I kind of want to just throw out an overarching theme to start and that will kind of frame this all for you, for everybody. So the difference between Part ninety one and Part one hundred seven public safety waivers is there's actually more similarities than differences. So kind of keep that in mind going forward. I'm going to kind of I will like outline some differences and kind of technicalities between the two but in the big picture these waivers are very, very similar.

Okay, and then I'll kind of just spoil the question as well at the front here again to just kind of help everybody frame this as I go through things in more detail. So if you're an agency kind of trying to decide like which should I do or what's the benefits of one over the other, in terms of just like the simplest way to think about it, this is kind of what I would recommend. So I would just think about what type of entity am I. If I'm a government entity, I would recommend Part ninety one as kind of the most just streamlined path to getting these waivers and getting operational.

If you're not a government entity, it's kind of a trick question. You really only have one option. You have to fly under Part one zero seven.

So the government entities do have a choice. They could fly under either one in most cases, but I recommend Part ninety one. And then if you're not a government entity, you fly under Part one hundred seven. So that's just kind of the simplest way to think about it. And as we go through the materials here I'll start to kind of just point out some of these differences, where they matter, where they don't and so on.

Okay so let's just kind of start doing like side by side comparison here a little bit of the two.

And again, I'm focusing initially here on just the public safety standard two hundred foot waivers. So this is your single drone waiver, one pilot to one drone, and this is a waiver you can generally get quite quite easy. There's streamlined processes for that.

Okay. So eligibility is kind of one of the first things you have to think about, and I already alluded to it in that that previous graphic. But to get a part ninety one waiver, you have to be two things. You have to be a public safety organization and a public aircraft operator. For part one zero seven, you only have to be a public safety organization. So that's where if you're not a government entity, if you're not a public aircraft operator, that's really the only choice for you.

And I've covered these definitions on previous webinars and obviously the FAA has lots of material on this.

So I'm going kind of skip the detailed definition here and you can refer back to the material there.

But yeah, and in this initial section I'm going kind of just highlight the differences in that gold text there to just sort of make them pop so you all can see that.

Okay so once you've decided or kind of determined what type of interviewer you are and now you've got to go get a waiver, this is the documentation that you have to put together to actually submit to the FAA for this waiver. So both the Part ninety one and the one hundred seven, they require a responsible person to complete a set of documents. For Part ninety one, you're going to fill out a seven thousand seven hundred eleven form, a waiver checklist, and a letter as a concept of operation.

Whereas under Part one hundred seven, you're going to do just the checklist and letter. So seven thousand seven hundred eleven is a unique form to ninety one.

It's a difference. I wouldn't say it's a meaningful difference though. It's just kind of a form to put your information and sign it.

And who is this responsible person?

This is the same between the two but I want to just highlight this too as just a common kind of question that I get when talking to agencies. So the responsible person, there needs to be one of these regardless of whether you do Part one hundred seven or ninety one.

And from the FAA's checklist, their definition is this is a person that accepts direct responsibility for safety of the operations under the waiver. They're kind of like that organization's designee for managing the operations under the waiver.

And the FAA's checklist goes on further to say like this is typically a chief assistant chief chief pilot type of role.

I find most agencies don't, they're not designating staff to fill like this type of traditional aviation role, chief pilot, so I tend to focus agencies on the gold text there of it's just a senior level person who's going to be accountable to the FAA.

And so a few more recommendations on the right side, you know we recommend that this person has a working knowledge of the drone program.

Don't go too high in the organization where you know like the chief for example, if they're not kind of following the program and they don't understand it like day to day ops I wouldn't pick that person.

And then this person does need to have some authority and standing in the agency to be accountable for it and finally they don't need a remote pass certificate so it doesn't need to be somebody that has one.

But yeah, think about who this is in your agency if you haven't gotten the waiver yet this person would sign those documents and then become responsible. And we're going to talk about responsibilities in a couple of slides here later, so we'll come back to this responsible person concept.

Okay. And then once you've got the documents ready, what do you do with them? Where do you send them to request the waiver? So under Part ninety one, you're going to just email them to the FAA and typically the FAA will respond in a week or two.

It's a pretty quick turnaround. Part one hundred seven is a little bit different. You're going to send the documents into a FA portal. So you'll create an account and you'll kind of go through the application process in the portal.

And once you've submitted it, it typically takes a little bit longer for the FAA to review these, but still quite fast, typically less than a month, but often a week or two as well.

So some differences, but I would say in the big picture these don't matter enough to like change how you should think about getting one over the other.

All right. And then now let's get into the approval. So you get the waiver. Now you're kind of thinking about how to go operate and comply with all the provisions.

So again, kind of back to that theme, these are more similar than different. So in the big picture, these two waivers, they effectively allow you to do the same thing, the same type of operations.

So for for both, you can do four hundred foot visual line of sight operations. And for part one hundred seven, that's just standard part one hundred seven. It's not, like, waived, but that's just kind of worth calling out. Under Part ninety one, there's actually a provision that says you can do this. So both of them would allow you to do visual line of sight operations still up to four hundred feet.

Both of them will allow you to do beyond visual line of sight operations up to two hundred feet. And that provision shown on the right side, it's actually verbatim the same between the two.

And both waivers allow you to do these things nationwide, either in uncontrolled airspace or in controlled airspace as long as you're below the UAS facility map altitudes.

And then drone requirements wise kind of the same thing. They're generally the same requirements. So you have to fly less than one hundred miles an hour, you have to use under fifty five pound drones and those drones have to have anti collision lighting and remote ID. When you're flying beyond visualized site you have to have a method of receiving ADS B and when you're flying over people you need for bigger drones at least you need a compliant parachute system and then there's kind of a point eight eight pound threshold where as long as they're under that and you have a method of preventing the props from lacerating humans you can also operate those over people. So more or less the same requirements. The gold text here, the one kind of difference probably between the two is Part ninety one has a limited exception in emergency situations where you can fly over people without the parachute.

But I would say at this point, we really strongly encourage the use of the parachute. It's a great product and really for dock based systems it's kind of part of the standard packaging anyway. So we really encourage agencies to use the parachute anyways but you know on a kind of just technical level that limited exception does exist under Part ninety one and not under Part one and seven.

Okay and then record keeping and reporting, again more or less the same, one kind of small difference but the responsible person, they're going to be responsible for maintaining a record of training, of pilots and drones flying under the waiver of things like site surveys and monthly flight time. And then they're responsible for reporting accidents and incidents to the NTSB and FAA.

One kind of common thing I see from agencies is they're not aware of the NTSB reporting requirements. These actually apply kind of drone wide. Like, if you're flying just under Part one hundred seven, these NTSB reporting requirements still apply to you, actually. So getting the waiver is kind of a good reminder that you have to do this and then the FAA has their kind of reporting requirements on top of that.

There's one difference. So under Part one hundred seven, and this is just because Part one hundred seven has this regulation one hundred seven point nine where you have to report this is kind of the five hundred dollars threshold or if you cause damage over that amount you have to report it. So Part one hundred seven has the additional one hundred seven point nine reporting requirement that Part ninety one doesn't, but that's really the only difference between the two.

Okay and so yeah, again just to hammer it home, like very similar. They're both going to allow you to do the same types of operations, to do DFR, to do tactical operations with any drone really that meets those requirements.

So then are there differences? Yes, there are some differences.

Some of these differences actually do have like an impact on your operations and some of them are just technicalities, really. So, we'll kinda talk about a few differences here, and I'm gonna kinda go in order of, like, things that matter to your operations and then things that are just kinda technicalities towards the end.

Okay, so the first one is the standard weather minimums. So this has actually been just a recent change under Part ninety one. So now if you apply for just standard two hundred foot Part ninety one waiver, you're going get a standard weather minimum of one statute mile and clear clouds. So you just have to have one mile visibility and just stay out of the clouds essentially, which allows you to fly in a little bit more inclement weather if there's like light rain or kind of some lower ceilings on occasion. This may give you a couple extra days a year that you can operate under. Part one hundred seven still has just like your standard three miles and five hundred foot below clouds weather requirements. So small difference here, but this may, you know, have an impact on your operations.

Okay. Qualifications, training, and airworthiness. So now we're the next couple are are start to get a little bit more, you know, complicated in-depth, nuanced. So under Part ninety one, your agency is really just responsible for self certifying these two things. So you're going to self certify your pilots and you're going to self certify that the aircraft are airworthy. Because under just kind of standard Part ninety one regulations aircraft have to have airworthiness certificates and those are issued by the FAA but as a public aircraft operator you can self certify that airworthiness.

Under Part one hundred seven, a little bit different in kind of the verbiage and the actual requirements. So pilots must have a remote pilot certificate. That's non negotiable. You've to have it.

But then don't forget, you know, the responsible person is still responsible for ensuring pilots have the knowledge and skills to do beyond the line of sight operations and to understand the waiver and so on. So it's kind of a remote pilot plus type of model. You've to have that SERP but then the responsible person is still responsible for kind of adding some extra training and knowledge on top of that.

And then as far as the drone goes, it's again slightly different. There's no concept of aircraft airworthiness in Part one hundred seven. What the regulations say is that the pilot is responsible for ensuring the aircraft is in a safe condition for operation. That's kind of the term that's used in Part one hundred seven. So before every flight, the pilot should be doing their preflight activities, making sure the drone is being maintained, and so on.

So on paper, these two things kind of look different, right? There's a self certification model and then there's kind of this Remote Pilot Plus and remote pilot responsibility for airworthiness.

I would kind of encourage agencies to think about this a little bit differently. I would encourage them to think about these two things actually the same in a sense.

So if you kind of step back and just remove the the words on screen for a second, I think we could all agree that the goal is just to ensure that pilots, when they're flying drones, are are safe. They're following the waiver provisions. They're getting the mission done, and we wanna be training those pilots to to do those things. So if we can all agree that just we wanna make sure pilots are trained and proficient and safe, that's the most important thing.

And so then if you add back in these terms, it kind of starts to matter a little bit less. Right? Just because a pilot gets a remote pilot certificate doesn't mean they're proficient and safe and ready to do the ambush line sight ops under a waiver.

And similarly, just because you can do self certification doesn't mean like just give the drone to somebody and let them go. You still need to make sure they're trained and safe and following the waiver. So I would kind of stress that just the most important thing is in your agency, think think about what your training program is. Think about is it covering all the the proficiency, the knowledge, the skills, and just document that training.

And that is gonna kinda satisfy these two things. Yes. You gotta go get the Remo PODS certificate under Part one hundred seven. Again, that's kind of a nonnegotiable, you've to make sure you're doing training on top of that.

And then similarly with the drones, right? So again, the goal is just to have kind of ready to go healthy drones that are being maintained and checked. So follow the OEM recommendations, do your preflight checks, do your postflight checks, and so on. And we have a lot of great written documentation on, like, what our maintenance intervals are, how to do the maintenance, how to do the check play after the maintenance, and so on. So there's a lot of resources out there if you're operating X10s for you to to have a good kind of airworthiness slash maintenance program.

And I brought the waiver provision back up. I know it's small print, this is just a call out back to that responsible person one. Actually let me see if I can find it quick.

This provision right here. So it kind of goes back to this, right? For both waivers, the responsible person and the operator are responsible for making sure the operator is trained, they're informed of the waiver, they're informed of the regulations and so on. So it kind of ends up again just like being similar in the end instead of different.

Okay. And now this is in that same vein, right? This is kind of another thing I hear where there's maybe a kind of perspective that under Part one hundred seven, it's like kind of all on the pilot and they're responsible for everything and, like, the agency's kind of shielded, in a sense, from liability and then, like, vice versa on Part ninety one, it's kind of all on the operator.

So, again, I kind of encourage shifting the thinking around this a little bit. So, yes, in the waiver, there's different terms being used. So under Part ninety one, it's the operator's responsible for x, y, z, or the operator must do this.

And then similarly on Part one hundred seven, it's the responsible person's responsible, must do this, and so on.

But, yeah, I've, again, just kind of similar to the previous slide, I would kind of encourage you to think about there's really like a shared responsibility model going on here. It's not just the pilot's responsibility, or it's not just the responsible person, or just the operator, and so on. So if we go, can I get the next slide up here? So I don't think it's a perfect graphic, but it's kind of what I came up with to just try and kind of get this point across right. So there's kind of the goal again just in the big picture is safe operations. We want to be safe, we want to be following the waiver, getting the mission done.

And so there's these two parties have to both kind of do their part, and they're responsible for different things. So the operatorresponsible person, because really the responsible person is just like the designee, the point person on behalf of the operator. They're responsible for training the pilots, making sure they understand the waiver, they're familiar with regs, etc.

They're going to likely be the one to respond to FAA inquiries or like surveillance activities. If there's a ramp check, this person might lead that. They're responsible for reporting and so on. So they're kind of responsible for things like before and after the flight, if that maybe helps frame it too.

And then the remote pilot on the other hand is responsible for like takeoff to landing and then the activities kind of directly before and after that. So they're going to launch the drone, they've got to make sure they got the return behavior set, the anti collision lights on, they're at two hundred feet, they're giving away crewed aircraft, etc. So their responsibilities are kind of primarily just directly before takeoff to landing.

There's likely some overlap in the middle, right, so they're both going to probably help with some airworthiness activities. You know, the operator is going buy the props and maybe the remote pod goes and puts them on when the intervals hit. Or the record keeping, right? So the remote pod is going to fill out some records after flight, but then their operator is going to report those as needed. So yeah, hopefully that kind of gets my point across here that there's really like shared responsibility.

It's not just one or the other. It's not just the pilot's job or just the RP's job or operator. And so both parties have to do their part to make sure we're doing safe compliant operations. And these two ultimately kind of become the same again at the end of the day.

Alright. Okay.

And then one more at the end just kind of for fun. I alluded to this before, right? So Part ninety one has more provisions, thirty eight provisions.

Part one hundred seven has twenty nine provisions.

This is not a meaningful difference or something you should be thinking about when you're choosing or deciding how to operate. So why does Part ninety one have more regulations? It's just simply because Part ninety one was not written for drone operations in mind and the FAA has to do a little bit more waiving to kind of make it match with Part one hundred seven. So there's two examples but there's many more.

For example Class B airspace. So under if you're flying in like an airplane, the pilot actually has to call ATC before they enter Bravo airspace and get clearance. Has to be an explicit thing. You're cleared to enter this airspace and that's every single time.

So that obviously like doesn't make a lot of sense for drones and so the FAA basically just waives that requirement for drones and instead you just stay at, you know, four hundred foot or two hundred foot or below the grid numbers, whatever those are, and that's sufficient to keep keep everybody safe and separated. Four hundred foot is another example. So part one zero seven has four hundred foot operations built in. That's like what the rule is written for.

They don't need to waive it, but part ninety one, they have to create a provision to allow you to do that under part ninety one.

Okay.

Yeah and please if you do have questions we're monitoring the chat. Throw them in and we'll try and get them answered for you.

Other considerations. So now I'm going kind of just move on to like the additional things, those additional approvals, airspace authorizations, etc.

So firstly, airspace authorizations. So again, the waivers that you get, the standard waiver, it allows you to fly below the facility map altitudes without any kind of additional approval. The waiver is the authorization to fly below the grids.

If you wanna fly above the grids, you have kinda two options. You can get an SGI, but SGIs are really for just kind of emergency purposes and they're case by case. So it's not really a good way to do routine operations. So if you want to routinely fly above a grid number, you need an airspace authorization.

And so the process is a little bit different between the two. For Part ninety one, you're going to submit that request in CAHPS And kind of generally the process then is you have to go get a public declaration letter, you submit that to the FAA to get CAHPS access, so they create your account for you and give you access.

And then you have to kind of put the application together and submit it in CAHPS.

Part one hundred seven, a little bit different. You submit those in DroneZone. And DroneZone is the same place that you register your drones. You might already have an account here. And so generally, you're just going to create an account if you don't have one yet and then submit your request there.

I would say this is probably the one downside of Part ninety one that's left really is the CAHPS portal. So I know some of you on the webinar have likely been in CAHPS. You know what I'm talking about.

It's not the nicest website. But we do have guides, and we'll help you get through it.

And it's similar for Part one hundred seven as well. So the process is a little bit more difficult than a Part ninety one, but agencies definitely navigate through it.

Both of them take about sixty or up to sixty days, I should say. Some go much faster, some go a little slower. And then the approval, once you get it, they're effectively identical.

So yeah, there's no real differences once you get through the process, just a little bit of difference along the way.

All right, and then multi drone. So as I mentioned to start the webinar, multi drone waivers are definitely now an option for agencies.

And so for Part ninety one, if you want to request a multi drone waiver, it's a similar streamlined process to the single drone request.

So the RPE is going to complete a set of documents. That set of documents is going to be a little bit more comprehensive than the two hundred foot single drone waiver and like if you're working with me we're going to provide you with a more comprehensive concept of operation and some answers to some questions and so on. So we put together kind of the multidrome material for you and then you fill out the seven thousand seven hundred eleven and checklist and submit it all. So those get emailed to the FAA and then they do take a little bit longer, so just kind of a heads up for agencies.

Maybe waiting a month or two months for a multi drone waiver and that's kind of standard timelines at this point under Part ninety one.

For Part one hundred seven, it's definitely possible to get multidrug waivers under Part one hundred seven, but there's no streamlined process yet. The FAA is kind of still working through that. So really what it looks like is just going through like the normal part one zero seven waiver process. So you're gonna be expected to put together a full concept of operation and answer all the FAA's WSEG questions.

Those questions, by the way, it's like the FAA's just published the questions for the regulations one hundred seven, three thousand one hundred thirty five, and if you do weather, fifty one as well. But they have some questions that they ask and you're expected to provide answers to those questions as part of this application process.

You would submit everything through that FAA Aviation Safety Hub portal again. That's the same portal as the single drone waiver. And then I would estimate maybe two to three months is kind of the normal Part one hundred seven processing time.

So again, not terribly different than Part ninety one, but I'd say Part ninety one is just a bit more streamlined right now.

But we can help you get the waiver either way and get you final with Multi Drone. Alright and then four hundred foot operations is actually very similar to multidrome. So if you have a detect and avoid system that's capable of detecting aircraft without ADS B that is a requirement but if you have that system D Drone Beyond would be an example and we work very closely with Axon to get that system integrated with ours.

You can request the four hundred foot waiver then so you are not limited to any more to two hundred foot when you're doing beyond visualized site operations.

So for part ninety one it's a similar streamlined process again just there's a set of documentation and you email that to the FAA and you wait a month or two.

Part one hundred seven, just like multidrone, not quite as streamlined so you'd end up submitting kind of a full application package and then submitting it in the portal and waiting maybe two to three months.

All right.

I'm just kind of looking at the questions that come in and I missed one for two slides ago so let me just kind of hit it live here. So kind of the question is, are these aerospace authorizations different than Lance? And the answer is yes. So well, yes, sort of. So LAANC has kind of two things. There's like the immediate as long as you're flying below the grid, you basically get immediate approval. But Lance also has, like, a further coordination version where so this would be, like, if you wanna fly in zero grids or above the the grids as well, and you have to go into DroneZone and submit it.

That's that's the part one zero seven version here. So for part one zero seven, aerospace authorizations are similar whether you're public safety or not. If you wanna fly above the grid, essentially, you have to submit one of these manual aerospace authorizations.

And then Part ninety one, LAANC doesn't apply to Part ninety one, like, at all. There's no construct of LAANC in Part ninety one, so that's why the waivers just include the ability to fly below the grids.

And then if you want to fly above the grids you have to submit a CAPS request.

So hopefully that answers that question. It's a good one. It's actually kind of a common question too so I'm glad this person asked like Lance just does not apply really to be on visual line of sight operations at all but it certainly doesn't apply to Part ninety one either. It's really only a system for visual line of sight Part one hundred seven operations. Everything else is going to go in these two portals here.

All right. And then there is another question I think I'll hit it too. It's kind of relevant to this topic. So can we request multiple waivers on one application for Part ninety one, or does each waiver need to be its own application? I would do just one.

When you make an application to the FAA, you're asking for kind of one waiver in a sense. You could ask for whatever you want in that waiver.

You could ask to fly at one thousand feet or four hundred feet or two hundred feet or anything like that. But the streamlined waivers that we're kind of talking about here that get approved in a week or two or one month, Those are limited to like the specific concepts here. Either you fly at two hundred feet with ADS B or you fly at four hundred feet with DA system and so on. So as long as you're asking for what these kind of standard waivers allow, then you'll get these waivers and these timelines. If you're asking for something outside of, like, the scope of what we're talking here, then the FAA has to do, like, their full kind of normal just review, lengthy review process.

And the outcome of each request is typically just like one waiver that allows you to do XYZ.

And maybe as a follow-up to yeah, let me add kind of one more thing to that. So, agencies, like, you can ask for more than one waiver, and that happens pretty commonly with the single drone to multi drone transition.

So we always kind of recommend agencies start by getting a single drone waiver, and that's going to be kind of one signed approval. And then the multi drone waiver, once you request it, it will be another it'll be a new, like, separate approval. So you'd end up actually with two waivers and then you have to decide before you fly, like, which waiver am I flying under and comply with it. So maybe that was the other angle for that question.

Okay, so kind of moving on to and this is still just in the other considerations category, I thought it would be worth putting this in here to just kind of get agencies thinking a little bit about this, is like what does the future look like for both of these and should that impact which type of waiver you get or not?

So here's just kind of some thoughts on it. Again, there's kind of no wrong answer right now as long as you're eligible for them.

But part one hundred eight kind of is on the horizon. We've we've you know, if you're you're curious about learning more about that, reach out to us. There's plenty of material out there as well kinda dissecting the NPRM and read the NPRM itself, definitely encourage that. But the NPRM does have a little bit of insight, right, into what's going to happen potentially with these two waivers. The rule was just proposed, it's not final yet so this could change, but for Part ninety one, the NPRM more or less proposed to leave Part ninety one alone. Like we're going to let Part ninety one operations continue as they always have. That's a quote out of the NPRM.

And then for Part one hundred seven, it's kind of the opposite. The FAA is proposing to amend one hundred seven to remove the ability to get Part one hundred seven BV loss waivers.

Now we expect some kind of transition period so that operators have time to go from Part one hundred seven to Part one hundred eight, but I think the most likely thing is Part one hundred seven BVLS waivers are gonna go away eventually. They'll sunset.

So Part ninety one might have a little bit more, you know, of a future proofness to it, but there's still, you know, the jury's still out. We have to see what the final rule says, and then we'll know for sure.

So take that just into consideration.

The other thing is I know some agencies out there are a little nervous about this self certification idea under Part ninety one.

And whether you're nervous or not, if you're flying under Part ninety one, you're doing it.

But if you read the Part one hundred eight kind of training and licensing requirements, I would say actually that Part one hundred eight has more in common with Part ninety one self certification than it does with Part one hundred seven. So under Part one hundred eight, as proposed at least, there's no pilot certificates, there's no tests, there's, nothing equivalent to the remote pilot certificate under one hundred seven. Instead, the FAA has a section on training and they would expect your training to cover certain topics, and the MPRN actually has a list of those topics right in there. There's a knowledge chunk and then a skills chunk. So you will be expected to know certain things, but the idea is to kind of put that on the operator to make sure they're training their pilots and covering those things. So it's more of kind of a corporate training model than an FAA training model.

And so I would kind of argue it has a little bit more in common with the self certification model and less part one hundred seven but again it's a proposed rule so we have to see what the final rule says and we'll kind of go from there but I guess I'm just kind of encouraging agencies to kind of think about just I need to have safe, proficient operators and I got to make sure I'm training them to do that and kind of not put so much weight on that remote pod certificate as, like, the thing that covers me.

All right.

So I'm going to kind of put this table and I'm just going to leave it up for a second. I don't want to rehash everything, but these webinars are recorded and then they'll be available afterwards. You can go back and replay this.

This is just kind of a table summary of the similarities and differences between PART ninety one and one hundred seven that we just covered.

And so if you're looking at this webinar later you can just kind of pause it and keep this slide up to read through it.

But you know again overarching theme, more similarities than differences. Yes there are a couple kind of just technicalities and differences between the two, but they're very similar and you really can't go wrong at this point. But if you want just a way to think about it and keep it simple, go back to the entity thing. So if I'm a government entity, go part ninety one. If I'm not a government entity, I've got to fly a one hundred seven.

All right.

And that's kind of it for content wise.

So, yeah, let's look. Let's see if there's any other questions here.

And yeah, definitely feel free if you have questions, go ahead and throw them in there. We've got at least one here. So the question is how does the Partner Any one waiver apply to tribal governments? Is it the same or not? So I would, let's see, I'm just gonna go back one slide. It's really no different at the end of the day. So if you're a tribal government, you should still qualify for Part ninety one, kind of being a government entity.

And then if you're not, if you're, you know, we've worked with like one customer I could think of that was part of kind of some tribal businesses but not government entity. So we ended up getting them a Part one hundred seven waiver instead. So I think the simplest answer is like this still applies just if you're part of tribal government you should be able to do Part ninety one. If not, do Part one hundred seven.

It is on you to make that determination to be clear. So there's some FAA guidance out there. There's an advisory circular that kind of talks about public aircraft and references U. S. Code for who and who doesn't meet those qualifications. I would definitely encourage just reading those and then making that determination and moving forward.

But yeah, just because you're tribal doesn't necessarily exclude you from either one of these out the gate.

All right.

I think that's it for questions.

We're going to end a little bit early potentially today and give some people some time back.

I'll throw kind of one thing out as we close and just got a couple extra minutes.

If you're an agency out there and like you just kind of listen to my webinar and you're going I'm not sure if I have like you know I'm the responsible person I don't know if I have everything in place.

So we we actually have now kind of a kind of like a checklist that we can give you. Just reach out. We can give you this checklist.

And it goes through kind of the requirements, and really it's a lot of things we just talked about, but it's kind of in a checklist form.

So yeah, and we put this together to just help agencies self assess, like do I have everything in place that I should be per my waiver, per the FAA requirements, and so on. So yeah it's just a two page checklist. It really just covers all the requirements in your waiver that you should be doing already. But if you'd like it in a nice kind of checklist format we can get that to you right away if you just reach out.

A final question rolling in, I think surgeons, so how far out from Part one hundred eight are we?

I don't know.

It's hard to predict. It's moving through its processes. We kinda keep getting updates that it's going from this office to the next and just working through the process.

You know, maybe by the end of the year, we'll have a a published rule, but do keep in mind just when the when the rule gets published, there's likely to be some kind of transition period, maybe a year, eighteen months. We'll see what it says. But but, yeah, the the rule will get published hopefully this year, and then there'll be kind of a transition period where everybody will be reading the rule and getting their act together. That will be, you know, Skydio as well to make sure our drones meet the requirements, and then we'll all kinda transition into part one zero eight, or we'll continue, you know, operating under part ninety one as long as that's still an option.

So good question. Hard to predict.

Hopefully soon.

Okay, no more questions. Let's just call it early, give everybody some time back. So thanks again though for joining the webinar and don't forget the previous webinars are all available. You can go back and watch them at any time. They're gonna all be in the same place in addition to this episode nine once we get it up. So thanks everybody for the time, and we'll see you on the next one. Stay safe.