The FAA's Part 108 rule — the regulation that would finally let drones fly routinely beyond visual line of sight without a one-off waiver for every flight — has been sitting at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs since July 10, and the standard 90-day review clock runs out October 8.
The rule, formally tracked under RIN 2120-AL82, missed its original executive-order target date of February 1, 2026. Its notice of proposed rulemaking published in the Federal Register in August 2025 drew nearly 3,100 public comments, and the FAA reopened a narrower comment window on proposed right-of-way and electronic-conspicuity requirements from late January through February 11, 2026, before sending the rule to OIRA this summer.
What the Rule Would Actually Change
Speaking at Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas on September 2, Jessica Jones, the FAA's Executive Director of the Office of Advanced Aviation Technologies, framed the stakes plainly: "Getting Part 108 solves a major problem for the FAA: it gets away from one-off approvals to a more scalable, predictable NAS." Right now, every beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operation in the country requires its own individually negotiated waiver — a bottleneck that has throttled the pace at which delivery and inspection drones can scale nationally.
Operators Are Building Ahead of the Text
Rather than wait, the largest players in the space are moving on parallel tracks. DoorDash Air has secured Part 135 air-carrier certification — the eighth US operator to do so — and is developing custom aircraft with a targeted delivery launch in fall 2026. Zipline, which has logged more than 2.7 million completed deliveries and over 135 million autonomous miles, has partnered with Uber on a joint goal of one million daily deliveries by the end of 2029, with first joint deployments expected later this year. Amazon's Prime Air currently operates from 11 sites across 10 metro areas in seven states and is targeting expansion to nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of 2026. Joby Aviation, meanwhile, expects eVTOL passenger flights under the FAA's Integration Pilot Program in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this month, as part of a Stage 5 type-certification process the company says is roughly 20 percent complete on its end and 10 percent complete on the FAA's.
The Fight Over Right-of-Way
Part of what has kept the rule at OIRA rather than in the Federal Register is a genuine industry split over two proposed provisions: right-of-way and electronic conspicuity. Many drone operators pursuing Part 108 approvals have backed the FAA's proposed shift that would give equipped, BVLOS-certified UAS priority over non-equipped aircraft in shared airspace, arguing it would reduce the need for costly onboard detect-and-avoid hardware. General aviation groups and the Air Line Pilots Association have pushed back hard, with ALPA specifically objecting to any framework that would shift collision-avoidance responsibility from drone operators onto manned-aircraft pilots. AUVSI, the industry's largest trade group, has urged the FAA to adopt a "layered detect-and-avoid" approach combining technical and procedural mitigations rather than resolving the dispute in either camp's favor outright — a compromise position that reflects how unsettled this piece of the rule remains even as the broader review clock runs down, meaning the version of Part 108 that eventually publishes may still change on exactly the provisions operators are least prepared for.
Why It Matters
Every one of those timelines is a bet that Part 108 lands roughly on schedule. If OIRA sends the rule back for revisions or the review slips past October 8 without a final text, operators who've committed to fall and 2026 launch dates will be flying on waivers and pilot programs for longer than planned — a familiar pattern in a rulemaking process that has already missed one hard deadline this year.
