FAA Part 108 Delay: BVLOS Rule Stuck at OIRA (2026)

The FAA's Part 108 rule — which would replace one-off BVLOS waivers with a standardized approval process — remains stuck in White House review as of September 8, 2026, five months past its executive-order deadline. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) received the final rule July 10 and won't complete its 90-day review before October 8.

That gap matters to every commercial drone operator waiting on routine BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) approval — flight where the remote pilot cannot see the aircraft with the naked eye and instead relies on onboard sensors, ground radar, or a visual observer network. Right now, that kind of flight still requires a case-by-case Part 107 waiver. Part 108 is meant to end that bottleneck, but the rule has now missed two deadlines in a row.

Background

Part 108, formally "Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations" (RIN 2120-AL82), was proposed in the Federal Register on August 7, 2025. It would create a performance-based pathway for BVLOS flights and third-party UAS Traffic Management (UTM) services, plus a new special airworthiness certificate process for drones up to 1,320 pounds.

The FAA has been chasing this rule for years — read what BVLOS actually means for the full technical background. Executive Order 14307 set a 240-day deadline for the final rule that expired February 1, 2026. The FAA reopened the comment period in January 2026 to address contested provisions on electronic conspicuity and right-of-way, drawing the process out further. By the time the initial comment window closed, the docket held roughly 3,100 public responses.

Why the Rule Is Stuck at OIRA

The FAA sent the final Part 108 text to OIRA — the White House office that vets significant federal rules before publication — on July 10, 2026. OIRA's review calendar shows the process is still active, not stalled quietly: the log lists 51 stakeholder meetings across both the proposed and final rule stages, with sessions held August 28, September 1, and September 3, and more scheduled for September 8, 14, 15, and 16.

That meeting cadence running through mid-September makes publication before then unlikely. OIRA's standard review window allows up to 90 days from receipt, putting the outer deadline at October 8, 2026 — though the agency can extend that window, and the rule has already blown past one legal deadline. Speaking at the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas on September 2, FAA Executive Director Jessica Jones said Part 108 "gets away from one-off approvals to a more scalable, predictable" national airspace system, without committing to a firm publication date.

A second, related rule is trailing even further behind. The TSA's companion security framework (RIN 1652-AA80), developed jointly with the FAA since a proposal was released in August 2025, had not even reached OIRA's pending-review list as of September 4. TSA has instead scheduled closed-door technical roundtables on BVLOS security requirements for after Part 108 publishes, with participation requests due October 19, 2026, limited to two representatives per organization under non-disclosure agreements.

Operators Are Building Ahead of the Rule

Despite the regulatory limbo, major delivery and air-taxi operators are not waiting on the sidelines:

Each of these operators still flies under existing Part 135 certificates or individual exemptions rather than the standardized Part 108 framework — proof that the industry is scaling around the bottleneck rather than waiting for it to clear.

What This Means for Drone Pilots

For commercial operators today, nothing changes immediately: routine BVLOS flight still requires a Part 107 waiver or a Part 135 certificate, and that will remain true until Part 108 is published and takes effect — likely not before mid-October, and possibly later given the ongoing OIRA meeting schedule. Operators planning BVLOS programs should keep pursuing waivers now rather than waiting for the new rule, since the transition period once Part 108 does land is not yet defined.

The TSA security rule is the piece worth watching most closely. If TSA's framework isn't ready alongside Part 108, some BVLOS approvals could face a second layer of security review before operators can fly commercially at scale — a detail that could matter more to delivery and infrastructure-inspection operators than the FAA rule itself. Outside the US, EASA's own BVLOS framework is moving on a separate track, so European operators are not directly affected by this specific delay.

Sources: Drone Intelligence | DroneXL | Federal Register