If you are flying under Part 107, the FAA requires the drone to be registered. The FAA’s registration guidance is clear: Part 107 registration costs $5 per drone and is valid for three years. Registration is handled through FAA DroneZone.
This is not a complicated process. For most survey teams, registration should be treated like basic fleet hygiene. If a drone is going to fly on commercial work, it should already be registered, marked, and documented before it ever gets loaded into the truck.
What you need
- Owner information and contact details
- Make and model of the drone
- Remote ID serial information, if applicable
- A credit or debit card for the registration fee
The FAA also requires that the registration number be displayed on the outside of the aircraft, and that the operator have the registration certificate available when flying.
Important distinction: Part 107 registration is per aircraft. Recreational registration works differently, and the two registration types are not interchangeable.
What about Remote ID?
The FAA now ties registration closely to Remote ID compliance. Drones that are required to be registered, or that are registered, generally must comply with the Remote ID rule.
For most modern professional hardware, that means either using a Standard Remote ID aircraft or a compliant broadcast module. If your compliance process still treats Remote ID as a future issue, it is already outdated.
When registration gets more complicated
Most survey drones are under 55 pounds and can use DroneZone. The more traditional aircraft-registration process matters for heavier aircraft, certain ownership structures, or special cases such as some international operations. The FAA summarizes those edge cases here: FAA unmanned aircraft registration.
For the vast majority of Aerotas-style field work, though, the rule is simple: register the aircraft, label it correctly, keep proof available, and stop treating this as a last-minute preflight task.