Every Part 91 Drone Approval Now Carries a See-and-Avoid Waiver

Every Part 91 drone approval now carries a waiver

The FAA has replaced the internal order that decides how it processes unmanned aircraft requests. JO 7200.23E carries an effective date of 31 October 2026, cancels the April 2023 edition, and rewrites the handling of Part 91 approvals, including one change that reaches every flight conducted under that part. Chapter 5 states the position without hedging: with no pilot on board, every approval issued under Part 91, for line of sight or BVLOS flight alike, now needs relief from the see and avoid regulation. In the earlier edition that relief travelled with BVLOS approvals. It now attaches to the approval itself.

Where the work goes, and how long it takes Line of sight and Class

A relief is delegated to the air traffic organisation's service centers under a memorandum of agreement dated 3 September 2025, and the service center must list the see and avoid relief on the certificate of waiver form. BVLOS requests take a different door: the proponent emails a concept of operations to the Flight Standards office that handles these waivers, then applies separately for airspace access through the FAA's systems. Two numbers follow from that. A new application should reach the FAA 60 business days or more ahead of the first intended flight, and a BVLOS waiver renewal goes in by email at least 60 business days before the old one lapses. A certificate of waiver or authorization still expires, so an operator with a busy spring works backwards from the expiry date rather than from the first job offer of the season.

The paragraph vertical structure crews have been waiting for

The order adds a paragraph covering inspections of vertical structures above the altitudes published in the facility maps. For a visual line of sight inspection of something like a communications tower or a high rise building, facility coordination is no longer required. The conditions are specific. The aircraft stays no further out than a hundred feet from the structure in any direction and no higher than a hundred feet above its top, keeps two nautical miles of separation from landing surfaces unless another authorization covers that airspace, holds five hundred feet under the cloud layer with two thousand feet of horizontal clearance, and the pilot keeps three statute miles of visibility from the control station. Bridges and power lines are excluded, because they are vertical structures with horizontal spans. Those requests go through the FAA's drone portal even where LAANC is available, and the order allows a specific area, a wide area or a nationwide authorization for companies that do this work at volume. LAANC still handles routine authorizations, and unless an authorization says otherwise, a pilot does not have to notify the tower before flying.

Why this lands before the civil rule

The see and avoid question is the same one holding the proposed Part 108 rule at the White House review stage, where the argument is about which aircraft yields when a crewed aircraft has not broadcast its position. This order does not settle that fight. It answers the question for Part 91 with a form field and a delegation, which means the interim BVLOS pathway now runs through a single Flight Standards mailbox while the civil rule waits. For inspection and construction programmes, the practical effect is a queue that moved, not a queue that disappeared. Work that used to sit in one office now starts in one mailbox and finishes in an airspace system, and a renewal that lapses mid season is a schedule problem rather than a paperwork problem.

Takeaway Pull every certificate of waiver or authorization your team holds, chec

k each expiry against the 60 business day submission window, and confirm the see and avoid waiver appears on the document before your next BVLOS flight.