Not every rough landing needs a phone call to the FAA, but some do — and the line is drawn precisely. Under § 107.9, a remote pilot in command must report an operation to the FAA no later than 10 calendar days after it happens if that flight involved serious injury to any person, any loss of consciousness, or property damage above a defined threshold. For property, the rule builds in a deliberate cushion: if the cost of repairing the damage does not exceed $500, or if a totally destroyed item’s fair market value does not exceed $500, no report is required. Damage to the drone itself never counts — the rule is about what your aircraft did to the world around it, not what happened to the aircraft.

This threshold exists to separate incidents that matter to aviation safety from ordinary mishaps. A scuffed propeller or a dented drone tells the FAA nothing useful; a drone that knocks someone unconscious or puts a hole in a greenhouse roof is data the system needs to spot patterns and prevent repeats. The 10-day clock starts at the operation itself, and the rule intentionally does not prescribe a single reporting format — it must simply be made “in a manner acceptable to the Administrator” (the FAA, acting through its authorized officials), which puts the burden on the remote pilot to find out what that manner is rather than assume silence is safe.

Separately, § 107.21 gives every remote pilot in command a narrow but real escape hatch: in a genuine in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, you may deviate from any rule in Part 107 to the extent necessary to meet that emergency. This is not a loophole — it is a recognition that rigid rule-following can itself be dangerous when something is actively going wrong in the air. The tradeoff is accountability after the fact: if the FAA asks, the remote pilot who deviated must send a written report explaining the deviation. The emergency authority is automatic the moment it is needed; the paperwork obligation only activates if the Administrator requests it.