This section covers waivers — a different tool from the airspace authorization mentioned in Chapter 1, and the shorthand for the difference is worth fixing now: an authorization answers “may I be in this piece of sky?”, while a waiver answers “may I set this rule aside?”. Under § 107.200 (the waiver authority), the Administrator may issue a certificate of waiver authorizing a deviation from any regulation on a specific list in § 107.205 (the list of regulations that can be waived) — not just where you can fly, but how: flying at night without an anti-collision light, one person covering more than one aircraft at a time, flying over people, or flying beyond visual line of sight without a visual observer. The two instruments are set side by side in § 3.5, once you have seen what an airspace authorization actually involves. The rest of this section is about the waiver itself.

The waiver framework exists because Part 107’s baseline rules — including the altitude and speed limits of § 107.51 (the general operating limitations), the visual-line-of-sight requirement of § 107.31 (the requirement that the remote pilot, visual observer, or person flying the aircraft be able to see it throughout the flight), and the airspace rule of § 107.41 — are built around the most common, most easily verified kind of operation. The logic appears to be that waivers then give the FAA a way to authorize operations that do not fit that mold, provided the operator can show the deviation is still safe.

§ 107.205 lists exactly which rules can be waived: operation from a moving vehicle or aircraft, the anti-collision light requirement for night and civil twilight flight, visual line of sight, the visual observer requirement, operating multiple small unmanned aircraft at once, yielding the right of way, operation over people, operation in certain airspace, the general operating limitations of § 107.51, and operations over moving vehicles. Two of those entries carry a hard stop built directly into the rule itself: no waiver of the moving-vehicle provision and no waiver of the visual-line-of-sight provision will be issued to allow carriage of another person’s property by aircraft for compensation or hire — that is, transporting someone else’s property or cargo by drone for payment. That carve-out is absolute — no safety case, however strong, can unlock either of those two waivers for a compensated delivery flight that depends on flying from a moving vehicle or on dispensing with visual line of sight.

Getting a waiver approved is not a formality — it is a safety case. Your request must contain a complete description of the proposed operation and a justification establishing that it can be conducted safely under the terms of the certificate. The Administrator can then add any additional limitations considered necessary, and once the certificate is issued, you may deviate from Part 107 only to the extent the certificate specifies, and you must comply with every condition and limitation written into it. The waiver does not erase the underlying rule — it replaces it, for you, with a custom rule the FAA has approved based on your specific proposal.