Can you fly here, this high, at this hour?

1 The pilot, the aircraft, the Remote ID

Commercial work runs under a remote pilot certificate with a small UAS rating (14 CFR 107.12), the aircraft carries a registration and its number is marked on the airframe (107.13), and it broadcasts Remote ID. Recurrent training under 107.65 comes due every 24 calendar months, and it is the check most often out of date on an otherwise legal flight.

Remote ID has two lawful routes: a drone that broadcasts on its own, or a broadcast module fitted to one that does not. Whether a given aircraft is a standard Remote ID drone is a matter of public record, and so is the subpart D category it holds for flight over people.

One obligation runs after the flight rather than before it, and it has a clock. A safety event that causes serious injury, loss of consciousness, or property damage above the threshold is reported to the FAA within 10 calendar days under 107.9. Ten days is not long if the first three go on finding out whether the threshold was crossed.

• Become a Certificated Remote PilotThe Part 107 certificate: eligibility, the knowledge test, IACRA
• FAA DroneZoneRegister the aircraft, renew it, and file waivers and airspace requests
• Remote Identification of DronesWhat has to broadcast, and the two ways to comply
• UAS Declaration of Compliance listWhether your exact model is a standard Remote ID drone, and which category it holds

2 The airspace over the spot

The rule is one sentence, and it is absolute:

“No person may operate a small unmanned aircraft in Class B, Class C, or Class D airspace or within the lateral boundaries of the surface area of Class E airspace designated for an airport unless that person has prior authorization from Air Traffic Control (ATC).” — 14 CFR 107.41

Puerto Rico is small and its controlled airspace is not. Between San Juan, Aguadilla, Ponce, Ceiba and Isla Grande, a good deal of the island sits under a shelf that needs an authorization before the props turn. Check the point, not the town. The line can run down the middle of a parcel, and the answer changes across a road.

Two paths lead out of it. Where LAANC covers the facility, an authorization comes back in seconds through an approved service supplier. Where it does not, or where the request exceeds the published grid, it goes to the FAA as a further coordination request through DroneZone, and that one is measured in weeks. Knowing which of the two you are on is the difference between flying on Saturday and flying next quarter.

• B4UFLYThe first look: what the airspace is at a specific point, on your phone
• UAS Facility MapsThe grid itself — the altitude ATC has pre-approved, square by square
• UAS Data Exchange (LAANC)How near-real-time authorization works, and the approved suppliers who issue it
• FAA UAS Data Delivery SystemThe published datasets themselves, if you want the source rather than an app’s reading of it

3 The altitude

Four hundred feet is the number everybody knows. The clause that matters is the exception attached to it:

“The altitude of the small unmanned aircraft cannot be higher than 400 feet above ground level, unless the small unmanned aircraft: (1) Is flown within a 400-foot radius of a structure; and (2) Does not fly higher than 400 feet above the structure’s immediate uppermost limit.” — 14 CFR 107.51(b)

Above ground level, not above the launch point. On the terrain west of the central range the ground under the aircraft can fall away a hundred feet while the number on the screen holds steady, because that number is measured from where it took off. Flying a ridge outward from a high pad is the ordinary way a legal flight becomes an illegal one without anybody touching the sticks.

The structure exception is narrower than it reads. Both halves have to be true at once: within a 400-foot radius and no more than 400 feet above that structure’s own top. It buys height for a tower or a stack; it buys nothing for the field beside one.

And in controlled airspace the federal ceiling is not the operative one. The facility map grid is, and some squares in that grid read zero.

4 The hour, and the light

Night flight is permitted, on two conditions — training and lights:

“… no person may operate a small unmanned aircraft system at night unless— (1) The remote pilot in command … has completed an initial knowledge test or training, as applicable, under § 107.65 after April 6, 2021; and (2) The small unmanned aircraft has lighted anti-collision lighting visible for at least 3 statute miles that has a flash rate sufficient to avoid a collision.” — 14 CFR 107.29(a)

The half that gets missed is civil twilight. Paragraph (b) requires the same anti-collision lighting through it, and paragraph (c) defines it as a fixed clock rather than a judgment about how dark it looks:

“… a period of time that begins 30 minutes before official sunrise and ends at official sunrise” and “a period of time that begins at official sunset and ends 30 minutes after official sunset”. — 14 CFR 107.29(c)

So the golden-hour flight everyone wants — the last twenty minutes before sunset and the twenty after — sits inside civil twilight and needs the strobe fitted and lit. Puerto Rico sharpens this. At this latitude the sun drops steeply and the usable light after sunset is short, so the window between a flight that needs no strobe and one that does closes faster than a pilot from a northern state expects.

• NOAA Solar CalculatorOfficial sunrise and sunset for a given latitude, longitude and date — the two anchors the 30-minute rule is measured from
• 14 CFR 107.29, in fullNight, civil twilight, and the lighting a pilot may dim but not extinguish

5 The weather, in two numbers

Part 107 sets a visibility floor and a cloud clearance, and both are measured from where the pilot is standing:

“The minimum flight visibility, as observed from the location of the control station must be no less than 3 statute miles.” … “The minimum distance of the small unmanned aircraft from clouds must be no less than: (1) 500 feet below the cloud; and (2) 2,000 feet horizontally from the cloud.” — 14 CFR 107.51(c) and (d)

On this island the binding one is usually the cloud. A trade-wind cumulus base sitting at 1,500 feet leaves a legal ceiling of 1,000, which is room to work. The same base at 800 feet leaves 300, and the 400-foot flight you planned is gone. Cloud here builds on the same afternoon it arrives, so this check belongs on the morning of the flight rather than the night before.

Visual line of sight rides along with it. 107.31 requires the pilot, the observer, or both to see the aircraft unaided throughout the entire flight — and 107.33 sets what an observer has to be able to do before the job counts as covered — well enough to know its location, attitude, altitude and direction. Haze that still leaves three statute miles of reported visibility can take a small grey aircraft out of sight at a fraction of that distance.

• Aviation Weather CenterMETARs and TAFs, including TJSJ, TJBQ, TJPS and TJMZ — ceiling and visibility as reported, not as guessed by a consumer app
• 14 CFR Part 107, in fullThe whole rule, current as published in the eCFR

6 What changed since yesterday

Airspace maps describe the standing rule. Temporary flight restrictions and NOTAMs describe today, and they are the two that make a flight you have flown fifty times unlawful on the fifty-first. In Puerto Rico the recurring causes are hurricane and disaster response, VIP movement, and firefighting — and a disaster restriction lands at exactly the moment somebody wants aerial documentation most.

Both sources are informational rather than a substitute for the whole of preflight action, which 107.49 puts on the remote pilot in command: assess the operating area, the local weather, the airspace, and the ground hazards, before every flight. 107.15 sits alongside it and is the one nobody quotes — no flight at all unless the aircraft is in a condition for safe operation, checked by the pilot before it leaves the ground.

• FAA Graphic TFRsTemporary flight restrictions in force right now, drawn on a chart
• FAA NOTAM SearchNotices by location — the official source, with its own caution that recently filed notices may not appear yet

7 The land underneath

Clear airspace and clear ground are two different questions, and the second is answered by whoever administers the land. Three federal land managers matter here.

National wildlife refuges. Puerto Rico holds five of them, on the main island and on the outlying islands, and the rule reaches both what happens in the air and where the aircraft touches down:

“The unauthorized operation of aircraft, including sail planes, and hang gliders, at altitudes resulting in harassment of wildlife, or the unauthorized landing or take-off on a national wildlife refuge, except in an emergency, is prohibited.” — 50 CFR 27.34

National Park Service land. Under Policy Memorandum 14-05 every superintendent closed their unit to launching, landing and operating unmanned aircraft without written approval. San Juan National Historic Site — El Morro, San Cristóbal, the city walls — is Park Service land, which is why the most photographed stonework in the Caribbean stays closed from the air unless a permit is already in hand.

National forest. El Yunque is administered by the Forest Service under a different regime again, with designated wilderness inside it that carries restrictions of its own.

Under all three sits the ordinary one: private property. Which is where Puerto Rico writes its own rule — check 9.

• 50 CFR 27.34The refuge rule, in nine lines
• National Wildlife Refuge SystemWhich refuge covers a given place, and how to reach it — the office that issues an authorization is the refuge itself
• Uncrewed Aircraft in the National ParksThe Park Service closure, and the written-approval route through the superintendent
• El Yunque National ForestThe forest’s own current guidance and closures

8 The people in the frame

This is the check that decides whether an event can be filmed the way a client pictures it. The general rule permits flight over a person in three situations:

“No person may operate a small unmanned aircraft over a human being unless— (a) That human being is directly participating in the operation of the small unmanned aircraft; (b) That human being is located under a covered structure or inside a stationary vehicle that can provide reasonable protection from a falling small unmanned aircraft; or (c) The operation meets the requirements of at least one of the operational categories specified in subpart D of this part.” — 14 CFR 107.39

Subpart D is the door, and which category an aircraft holds is a property of the aircraft as declared to the FAA, not of how carefully it is flown. A crowd outdoors adds a second condition on top of the category:

“No remote pilot in command may operate a small unmanned aircraft in sustained flight over open-air assemblies of human beings unless the operation meets the requirements of either § 89.110 or § 89.115(a) of this chapter.” — 14 CFR 107.115(b), and in the same words at 107.110(b) and 107.140(a)(2)

Those two sections are the Remote ID requirements. So the chain for a reception, a procession or an opening day is: a qualifying category, plus Remote ID, plus sustained flight. Category 3 sits outside it entirely, since 107.125(b) bars operation over an open-air assembly whatever else is true.

Where an aircraft does not hold a category that reaches a crowd, the flight is still available and the frames are still there. It gets planned around where people will be standing, which is a shot-list decision made days ahead, on the ground.