The drone questions everyone asks, answered straight.

Two things, and they are not the same thing.

A Flyer ID is yours. You get it by passing a free online theory test, and it lasts five years. Anyone flying a drone of 100g or more needs one. Under-13s can take the test, but with a parent or guardian.

An Operator ID belongs to whoever owns or is responsible for the aircraft. It costs £12.34 a year, you have to be 18 or over to register, and the number has to be labelled on the drone itself. You need one if the aircraft weighs 250g or more, or weighs 100g or more and has a camera.

One person can hold both. If a friend borrows your drone, they need their own Flyer ID but they fly under your Operator ID.

Almost certainly, yes. This is the bit that catches people out, because the threshold moved.

The Flyer ID line is now 100g, not 250g. So a sub-250g drone with a camera — which is most of the small ones people buy — needs both a Flyer ID and an Operator ID.

Under 100g with no camera you are not legally required to register, but the CAA still recommends taking the test. It is free and it takes about twenty minutes.

120 metres — 400 feet — above the surface. That is a hard legal limit, not a guideline.

It exists because that is the floor most manned aircraft stay above. The gap between you and a helicopter is the whole point of the number.

Worth knowing: it is measured from the surface below the aircraft, not from where you are standing. Fly out over a valley and your drone can be well over 120m above the ground even though your controller says otherwise.

There is no distance in metres — and that surprises people who are expecting one.

The rule is Visual Line of Sight. You have to be able to see the aircraft with your own eyes for the whole flight, well enough to tell which way it is facing, and to see the airspace around it so you can get out of the way of anything else. Binoculars, a zoom lens or the camera feed do not count.

In practice that puts most people a few hundred metres out at most. If you have lost it against the sky, you are already outside the rule — bring it back.

It depends on the aircraft, which is what the A1 / A2 / A3 subcategories are for.

A1 — under 250g, or UK0/UK1 class marked. You can fly closer than 50m to people, and over them.

A2 — UK2 class, with an A2 Certificate of Competency. Keep 30m from uninvolved people, or 5m in low-speed mode. Not over them.

A3 — everything else. Keep 50m from uninvolved people, 150m from residential, recreational, commercial and industrial areas, and 50m from individual buildings.

Never fly over a crowd. That one has no exceptions and no weight limit — it applies to every drone, including the tiny ones.

Anyone who has not agreed to be part of what you are doing and is not under your control. A dog walker who happens to be in the field is uninvolved. So is a neighbour in their own garden.

Your assistant, the client who booked you, the groundsman who let you on site — those people are involved, because they know what is happening and have accepted it.

If you are unsure which side of the line someone falls, treat them as uninvolved.

Two separate questions that people tend to merge.

The air: in A3 you need to stay 150m clear of residential, recreational, commercial and industrial areas. A park in a town is a recreational area, so a heavier drone usually cannot legally fly there. A sub-250g drone can.

The ground: you need the landowner's permission to take off and land. Many councils, the National Trust and most parks say no by default. That is not aviation law, it is trespass and byelaws, but it will still end your afternoon.

An FRZ sits around every protected aerodrome, and it is not a simple circle.

It is made of the aerodrome traffic zone — a cylinder of 2 or 2.5 nautical miles radius up to 2,000ft — plus a 1km-wide corridor extending 5km from the end of each runway, plus a bump out to 1km beyond the aerodrome boundary where that falls outside the cylinder.

Those runway corridors are what catch people. You can be several miles from the terminal buildings and still be inside the zone, because you are lined up with the approach.

You must not fly inside one without permission from air traffic control or the aerodrome operator. Ring them — most are entirely reasonable if you ask properly and give them notice.

Check on the day, not from memory. Airspace is temporary as often as it is permanent — air displays, VIP movements, police operations and major incidents all generate restrictions at short notice.

Use one of the drone mapping apps to see restricted airspace and live notices before you leave, and check again on site. And look up: if there is a police or air ambulance helicopter working, land. They will not be expecting you and you will not out-manoeuvre them.

Yes, and it can be some of the best flying you will do. There is a condition though, and it is new.

Since 1 January 2026 a green flashing light must be on for the whole flight. It is there so anyone looking up can tell what you are and which way you are going.

Visual line of sight still applies after dark, which is harder than it sounds. Knowing roughly where your drone is because you can see a light is not the same as being able to tell which way it is facing.

From 1 January 2026 new drones sold in the UK carry a UK class mark, UK0 to UK6. The mark tells you which subcategory the aircraft can fly in, so you are not working it out from weight alone.

European C-marks are recognised as equivalent until 31 December 2027. After that, a C-marked drone that has not been re-marked is treated as a legacy aircraft and judged on weight.

If you have an older unmarked drone, it is legacy — you are not grounded, but you are working to the weight-based limits, which usually means A3.

Remote ID broadcasts the aircraft's identity and position while it is flying.

It has applied to UK1, UK2 and UK3 class drones since 1 January 2026. From 1 January 2028 it extends to effectively everything else — model aircraft, UK0 drones with cameras, legacy and home-built aircraft of 100g or more with a camera.

If you are buying now, buying something already equipped saves you a job in 2028.

If you are flying purely for your own recreation, insurance is not generally required by law — though third-party cover is cheap and a drone into a car windscreen is not.

The moment money is involved, it changes. Commercial operations require insurance that meets the aviation requirements, which a normal household policy will not. Check the current position on the CAA site before you take a paid job.

Being paid does not by itself demand a different qualification — what matters is the aircraft and how close you need to get to people. That is what pushes an operation from the Open Category into the Specific Category.

Flying without the registration you should hold can bring a fine of up to £2,000. Flying somewhere you should not — inside an FRZ, over a crowd — is a good deal more serious, and endangering an aircraft is a criminal offence carrying a prison sentence.

The bigger cost is shared. Every serious incident becomes an argument for tightening access to the airspace for all of us. The pilots who fly carefully are the reason the rest of us still can.

The habits worth building, in the order we run them:

• Airspace and live notices, on the day, on site
• Wind at height — not the wind you feel on the ground
• Batteries, props and a firmware check before you leave home
• Where you are taking off and landing, and whose land it is
• Who is nearby, and where they will be in ten minutes
• Return-to-home height set above the tallest thing around you
• An out — where the aircraft goes if something fails

The last one is the one people skip. Have an answer before you take off.