The Federal Aviation Administration has denied a request to extend the reopened comment period for its proposed Part 108 rule on beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) unmanned aircraft operations, maintaining a deadline of this Wednesday for public input.
The agency reopened the comment period on Jan. 28 to seek additional feedback on electronic conspicuity and right-of-way provisions tied to the broader BVLOS proposal first published in August 2025. The FAA said the additional comment window focuses on topics that were already addressed during the original 60-day comment period, which drew roughly 3,100 submissions.
According to the FAA, the reopened comment period was intended to gather more detailed responses on limited areas related to Part 108, including detect-and-avoid requirements and the role of ADS-B Out and alternate electronic conspicuity devices in integrating unmanned aircraft into the national airspace system. The agency said the 14-day reopening provides sufficient time for stakeholders to respond, noting the issues had been previously discussed in the rulemaking process. The FAA also said a lapse in Department of Transportation funding does not affect the ability of stakeholders to review materials or submit comments.
In its notice, the FAA stated that extending the comment period could delay finalization of the rule and affect stakeholders planning operations tied to BVLOS capabilities.
The Part 108 proposal would establish performance-based regulations for BVLOS low-altitude unmanned aircraft operations, along with third-party services supporting those flights, including UAS traffic management.
Comments on the reopened proposal close Wednesday, after which the agency will continue developing the final rule.
Good evening! FAA needs to park BVLOS at the run-up area and do its checklist…
1.) Can UTM and DAA play nicely within the existing and NextGen ATC framework? If not, well…isn’t this entire matter altogether premature? What are the benchmarks to ensure these technologies play nicely? Goodness, if we don’t get this right, aviation safety is going to be a mess!
2.) What does Electronic Conspicuity even mean? Once defined, what are its technical and operating parameters for safe operation?
3.) Should BVLOS even be permitted near towered airports? I appreciate that UPS would probably like to lighten its payroll a bit by employing drones, but commercial airliners intermingling with autonomous drones when we haven’t even nailed down the technical paramters for BVLOS is shady at best.
4.) Are the current FAA test sites even vaguely analogous to Class B or C airspace? In other words, why should we buy the test data?
5.) The incumbent (manned) airspace users have an existing safety culture. Why should those airspace users be required to adapt their use to BVLOS instead of the newcomer adapting to the incumbent’s?
There are many issues touching upon the entire ‘right-of-way’ matter, and fourteen days wasn’t enough time to even develop a record on what constitutes EC, much less answer the weightier questions that undergird as big an issue as right-of-way.
While I don’t envy our friends at the FAA for this monumental task – and I am very grateful for their enormous lift on it – I hope they appreciate that a bad regulation will do far more to set back BVLOS’s future than a hastily assembled regulation cow-towing to industry’s demands.
I asked for 16 more days to develop the record and get more of the heavy weight commenters’ inputs. FAA didn’t think 16 more days was necessary. I hope they were correct.