Registering a drone
Registering a drone in the United Kingdom is an administrative act carried out with the Civil Aviation Authority by whoever is responsible for the aircraft, and it produces an operator identifier that is then marked on the airframe itself. It is not a test, it is not an inspection, and nobody looks at the aircraft. The registration records who answers for a machine, in the same way a vehicle keeper is recorded rather than assessed. The separate question of whether the person at the controls has passed anything is answered by a second identifier entirely, and running the two together is the commonest confusion on the subject.
What registering actually creates
Registering creates a number, and the number is the point. The operator identifier is issued once to a person or an organisation, not once per aircraft, so somebody responsible for a small machine, a larger camera machine and a fixed wing model holds a single identifier and writes the same string on all three. It sits in a register the CAA maintains, alongside contact details, so that an aircraft found in a hedge can be traced back to somebody. That is the entire purpose of the exercise and it explains every other feature of it.
What registering does not create is any statement about competence. No part of the operator registration asks whether the applicant can fly, has flown, or intends to fly. A person who buys a drone as a gift and never touches the controls can be the registered operator of it. The competence side is the flyer identifier, obtained by passing an online theory test, and The drone licence question sets out the two side by side.
Who has to register, and who does not
Registration falls on the operator, which is a role rather than a skill. The operator is the person or organisation responsible for the aircraft: usually the person who bought it and keeps it, and in a household with a young flyer it is the adult rather than the child. The scheme is built so that the two can be different people, because the operator has to be an adult while the flyer identifier is open to a younger person in their own name.
The aircraft then decides whether an operator identifier is required at all, and two attributes settle it. The first is weight, measured with the battery, propellers and any payload fitted, against the 250 gram boundary. The second is whether the machine carries a camera or another sensor able to record a person, which is why the very lightest camera drones are not in the same position as equally light machines without a lens. The combination of those two attributes is published by the CAA and has been revised more than once as class markings have come in.
| Question | Operator identifier | Flyer identifier |
|---|---|---|
| Who holds it | The person responsible for the aircraft | The person at the controls |
| How many are needed | One per operator, however many aircraft | One per person, however many aircraft |
| How it is obtained | Registration and a charge | An online theory test |
| Where it is displayed | Marked on every aircraft covered | Nowhere on the aircraft |
| What decides it | Weight, or a camera on board | Weight |
What registering asks of you, in order
Registering asks for a short sequence of things, and the order runs from the aircraft to the register and back to the aircraft again.
- Weigh the machine exactly as it flies, with battery, propellers and guards fitted, and record which side of 250 grams it falls.
- List every aircraft you are responsible for, because one identifier will cover all of them.
- Register with the CAA scheme as the operator, supplying contact details and paying the charge the CAA publishes.
- Receive the operator identifier, which is a short alphanumeric string rather than a certificate.
- Mark that string on each aircraft, legibly, without needing a tool to read it, and on a part of the airframe that stays with the machine.
- Renew the registration when the scheme calls for renewal, since it runs for a set period and lapses if left.
The marking step is the one most often done badly. An identifier written on a battery disappears the first time a spare pack goes in, and one written on a removable canopy or a gimbal cover leaves with the part. The body of the aircraft is where it belongs. Printed labels, an engraving pen and a fine permanent marker all serve; what matters is that somebody who picks the machine out of a field can read the number without dismantling it.
Caution
Do not scratch, drill or engrave into a battery case, a motor housing or any part of the shell that encloses the flight battery. Breaching a lithium polymer pack can start a fire that water will not put out, and a cracked shell around one is the same risk with a delay on it. Mark a flat, solid part of the airframe instead, or use a label.
Where registration does not apply
Registration does not apply to the lightest machines with no camera, which is the case a great many first-time buyers are in and the reason the sub 250 gram class dominates the shelves. It does not reach the flight itself either: an operator identifier neither raises the 400 foot ceiling, nor shortens a separation distance, nor opens a flight restriction zone around an aerodrome, nor makes a flight beyond your own eyesight acceptable. Those requirements attach to what is done in the air, not to who is on the register, and The UK rules, in order sets them out as a sequence.
It does not reach across borders in either direction. A search for FAA drone registration in the UK is a search for two different countries at once: the Federal Aviation Administration is the United States regulator and its registration has no standing here, while a UK operator identifier has none there. Canada, Australia and most European states run their own registers, their own weight boundaries and their own charges, and none of them recognises another's number as a substitute.
Finally, registration is not cover. Being on the register does not answer for damage the aircraft does to a greenhouse or to a person, and Insurance is where that question is dealt with rather than here.
Where readers go wrong about it
The commonest error is registering one aircraft rather than registering oneself. People buy a second machine and go looking for a second registration, when the identifier they already hold covers it and only needs writing on the new airframe. The mirror of that error is a household in which one adult has registered and assumes the whole family is covered for the flying as well: the operator side is covered, and every person who takes the controls of a machine at or above the weight boundary still needs the flyer identifier in their own name.
The second error is treating weight as the whole test. A machine under 250 grams settles the flyer side by weight alone, but the operator side takes the camera into account as well, and most light machines sold today have one. The third is assuming registration expires only when the aircraft is sold. It runs for a period and lapses on its own, which is why the renewal step is in the list above rather than left as an afterthought.
Does your own aircraft need registering?
To decide whether an aircraft needs registering, weigh it as it flies and read the figure against 250 grams, then look at it and establish whether it carries a camera or any other sensor that can record a person, then ask which of the household is actually answerable for the machine. Those three answers are the ones the scheme is asking for, and they are the ones to take with you to the register.
They tell you which questions apply. They do not settle your particular case, and this page describes the registration requirements rather than interpreting them for any one aircraft or offering legal advice. The Civil Aviation Authority publishes the drone and model aircraft registration requirements and revises them as the scheme changes, so the CAA's own pages carry the current version, including the charge, the renewal interval and the exact weight and camera test in force today.