Operations Over People: Four Categories Explained

Section 107.39 doesn't ban flying over people. It bans flying over a person unless that person is directly participating in the operation, is under a covered structure or inside a stationary vehicle that gives reasonable protection, or the operation fits one of four specific categories, and that distinction is exactly where most wrong answers on this topic come from. Candidates tend to reach for a single memorized rule, usually the weight limit, when the actual question is testing which category applies and what that category does and doesn't allow.

What are the four categories for flying over people?

Category 1 is the one most people can picture without looking anything up: the aircraft weighs 0.55 pounds (250 grams) or less, counting everything on board or attached, and has no exposed rotating parts that could lacerate skin. That's it. No paperwork, no performance testing, just a hard weight ceiling and a physical design requirement.

Categories 2 and 3 are where most of the confusion lives, because they aren't defined by weight at all. They're defined by injury limits instead. Under §107.120, a Category 2 aircraft must not cause an injury as severe as the one caused by a transfer of 11 foot-pounds of kinetic energy from a rigid object; under §107.130, the Category 3 threshold is 25 foot-pounds. Both also require no exposed rotating parts that would lacerate skin and no safety defects. To fly under Category 2 or 3, the aircraft has to be listed on an FAA-accepted Declaration of Compliance for that category and carry a label showing its eligible category. If the label is damaged or missing, §107.135 makes the remote pilot re-label it before flying over people. A Declaration of Compliance is not a blanket permission slip to fly over any moving vehicle or any crowd; it only establishes that the aircraft itself qualifies for its category, nothing more.

Category 4 is the outlier: it requires an actual airworthiness certificate under 14 CFR part 21, the same regulatory family manned aircraft certification lives in. Most Part 107 operations never touch Category 4, but the exam still expects you to recognize it as the category tied to a type-certificated aircraft with FAA-approved operating limitations, not something a hobbyist-grade platform backs into.

None of the four categories change based on time of day. Night operations over people follow the same category rules as daytime ones, layered on top of the separate night-operation requirements in § 107.29.

Is category eligibility permanent?

A Declaration of Compliance is tied to a specific aircraft configuration, not to the aircraft as a general product. The remote pilot operating instructions that come with a Category 2 or 3 aircraft list the modifications that don't change its eligibility. Modify it outside that list and the aircraft no longer matches what was declared, so it no longer qualifies for that category until a declaration of compliance covering the modified aircraft is accepted. This is a genuinely common trap: a candidate assumes the category is a property of the aircraft model, when it's actually a property of that aircraft in its currently-documented configuration. Swap an unapproved battery, attach an unlisted payload, or run a modification the manufacturer didn't account for, and you're not flying a Category 2 aircraft over people anymore, you're flying an aircraft with no category at all. Payloads raise other questions too, which the dropping objects post covers.

Open-air assemblies and moving vehicles: the sustained-flight distinction

Two situations get their own separate rules layered on top of the category system, and both hinge on the word "sustained."

Flying briefly across a crowd or a road is treated differently than lingering over one. Category 1, 2, and 4 aircraft may not make sustained flight over open-air assemblies of people unless the operation meets the Remote ID requirements of §89.110 or §89.115(a), meaning Standard Remote ID or a broadcast module. With that, no waiver is needed. Category 3 goes further: under §107.125 it can't operate over open-air assemblies at all, sustained or not. The same sustained-versus-transit distinction shows up for people inside moving vehicles under §107.145. For Categories 1 through 3, the aircraft must either stay within or over a closed- or restricted-access site where everyone in the vehicles is on notice, or not maintain sustained flight over moving vehicles. Category 4 depends on the aircraft's operating limitations.

Category 3 has one more rule over individual people: it may fly above them only within or over a closed- or restricted-access site where everyone is on notice, or without sustained flight over anyone who isn't participating or protected. In both cases "closed or restricted-access" and "on notice" do real work. A parking lot that happens to be quiet is not a restricted-access site just because nobody's around at the moment.

The trap the exam keeps setting

Almost every wrong answer on this topic comes from treating one exception as if it covers everything. A Declaration of Compliance proves the aircraft qualifies for Category 2 or 3, it doesn't authorize flight over a crowd. A person standing under a covered structure or inside a stationary vehicle that gives reasonable protection can be overflown under §107.39(b), but that exception applies only to people actually under cover, not to everyone nearby. Category eligibility, the open-air assembly rule, and the covered-structure exception are three different provisions that happen to interact, and exam questions are built specifically to test whether you're tracking which one actually applies to the scenario in front of you.

The fastest way to get an operations-over-people question right is to ask, in order: what category is this aircraft actually eligible for right now, does the situation involve an open-air assembly or a moving vehicle, and is anyone in the scenario protected by the separate covered-structure exception. Answer those three, and the "single rule" most candidates go looking for turns out not to exist.

The full citation trail and all seventeen ACS elements for this task live in the handbook's Operations Over People section, including how this interacts with Remote ID compliance for the open-air assembly exception.

Category eligibility overlaps with other rules. See Remote ID for Part 107, what can be waived in Part 107 waivers, and the aircraft rules in registration, reporting, and preflight.

Roads get their own rule for people inside moving vehicles; flying over roads and cars walks through it.