FAA Drops Section 2209 NPRM After Decade-Long Wait, Industry Has 60 Days To Shape The Rule

The Federal Aviation Administration filed its long-overdue Section 2209 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for public inspection this morning, opening a 60-day comment window that will determine how thousands of fixed-site facilities can apply for permanent drone restrictions over their property. The 181-page rule, scheduled for Federal Register publication tomorrow, would create a new 14 CFR Part 74 framework with two designation tiers and stricter eligibility criteria than many industry observers expected.

The proposal arrives nine years after the original January 2017 deadline Congress set in the FAA Extension, Safety and Security Act of 2016. It is the most consequential drone airspace rulemaking since the Remote ID final rule in 2021, and every Part 107 commercial pilot, every public safety agency, and every critical infrastructure operator now has 60 days to weigh in. The FAA has explicitly invited public input on the most contested questions in the rule.

The Two-Tier UAFR Framework

The proposal creates two airspace designations under a new 14 CFR Part 74. A Standard Unmanned Aircraft Flight Restriction would let operators of qualifying fixed-site facilities petition the FAA for defined airspace where drones cannot operate unless they fall into a narrow set of exceptions.

A Special UAFR is the more aggressive tier. It would tightly restrict drone operations at sensitive federal sites and at certain endorsed fixed-site facilities, with five-year designations that parallel the existing Special Security Instructions process under 14 CFR 99.7. Operations within a Special UAFR require both permission from the using agency and approval from the FAA Administrator. The affected airspace can also be designated as national defense airspace under 49 U.S.C. 40103(b)(3), carrying potential criminal penalties under 49 U.S.C. 46307.

Neither designation gives facility operators legal authority to use counter-drone equipment. The rule explicitly says it does not authorize geo-fencing, jamming, drone capture, or any form of mitigation technology. That separation matters and I will come back to it.

Sixteen Sectors And A Nine Thousand Facility Scenario

The FAA proposes to limit UAFR eligibility to facilities that meet the federal definition of critical infrastructure under 42 U.S.C. 5195c(e) and that fall within one of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors identified in National Security Memorandum 22 of April 30, 2024.

Those sectors include chemical, commercial facilities, communications, critical manufacturing, dams, defense industrial base, emergency services, energy, financial services, food and agriculture, government services and facilities, healthcare and public health, information technology, nuclear reactors, materials, and waste, transportation systems, and water and wastewater. Within each sector, applicants must meet additional criteria the FAA describes in Section V.D of the preamble. The agency built its cost estimate on a scenario of “over 9,000 eligible fixed site facilities obtaining UAFRs,” producing annualized costs between $21 million and $31 million. That is the FAA’s own modeling input. It is not a cap.

The 2024 Reauthorization removed the open-ended “other locations that warrant such restriction” category that had been in the original 2016 statute. The FAA is asking for public comment on whether the 16-sector framework is the right scope and whether other facility types should qualify.

Commercial Operators Get A Transit Lane

Proposed § 74.250 would allow drones operating under Parts 91, 107, 108, 135, and 137 to transit a Standard UAFR if they broadcast Remote ID under Part 89, transit in the shortest practicable time, and notify the facility per § 74.255.

This is the part of the rule that matters most for working pilots. It means a Part 107 commercial operator on a real estate job, a Part 108 BVLOS delivery operator, an agricultural Part 137 spray operation, and a Part 135 cargo flight all retain the ability to transit Standard UAFRs subject to Remote ID broadcast and notification. Recreational flyers operating under 49 U.S.C. 44809 are not on that list.

The FAA explicitly invites comment on what additional unmanned aircraft operations should be allowed through a UAFR and what economic impact would result if commercial operators are not allowed to transit. That question has been at the center of industry advocacy for years. The Commercial Drone Alliance, the Drone Service Providers Alliance, and AUVSI have all argued in favor of preserving commercial transit access in any Section 2209 framework.

Counter-Drone Authority Stays Off The Table

The proposed rule does not give facility operators counter-drone authority. It does not authorize geo-fencing, jamming, drone capture, or any form of mitigation technology, and it does not change existing federal criminal law on interfering with aircraft or destruction of property.

Facilities that already have separate statutory authority to use detection or mitigation systems retain that authority under existing federal law. Everyone else gets a legal designation, a Federal Register entry, and the ability to ask law enforcement to focus its resources on flights inside the restricted airspace. This is the line we identified in our coverage of the Safer Skies Act in March: airspace designation and counter-UAS authority are separate buckets, and Section 2209 is the airspace designation bucket. The two pieces of federal drone policy now sit alongside each other rather than overlap.

Sixty Days To File Comments

Once the rule publishes in the Federal Register tomorrow, the public has 60 days to file comments on Docket No. FAA-2026-4558 through regulations.gov, by mail to Docket Operations at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, by hand delivery, or by fax to (202) 493-2251.

The FAA is asking for comment on the 16-sector limitation, on whether other facility types should qualify, on the economic impact to commercial UAS operators if transit is not allowed, on what information operators should provide to demonstrate they are not a security threat, and on what additional technological or procedural requirements should apply to operators transiting UAFRs. The rulemaking docket is where the substantive argument now happens. Industry groups, civil liberties organizations, and state and local governments have spent years building position papers that will turn into formal comments. State critical infrastructure laws written in the absence of a federal rule will collide with whatever 14 CFR Part 74 ends up looking like.

DroneXL’s Take

DroneXL has been tracking this rule since January 2023, when we reported the FAA’s delay of an implementation that was already six years past its statutory deadline. The 2018 Reauthorization gave the FAA a March 31, 2019 deadline for an NPRM and a 12-month deadline for a final rule. That deadline came and went. The “February 2024 at the earliest” target also came and went. The rule moved to OMB review in May 2025 alongside the BVLOS rule, and Executive Order 14305 finally pushed it across the line in June 2025. What dropped today is the result of nine years of stakeholder fights about what counts as critical infrastructure and who gets to draw the lines.

The substance is more measured than I expected. The 16-sector framework is narrower than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce coalition pushed for in its joint OMB submissions, and the explicit transit allowance for Parts 91, 107, 108, 135, and 137 operators in § 74.250 is a meaningful industry win that was not guaranteed. Commercial operators, public safety agencies, and BVLOS delivery companies retain the ability to fly through restricted airspace subject to Remote ID and notification. That is the kind of language that survives only when the agency drafting the rule actually hears the operator community before the comment window opens.

The Special UAFR five-year designation is the part of the rule that has had the least public scrutiny and deserves the most. It runs parallel to the existing 14 CFR 99.7 Special Security Instructions process but creates a longer-term restriction over sensitive federal sites that can be endorsed by federal security or intelligence agencies, the Department of War, or “at the discretion of the Administrator.” That last phrase is broad enough to drive a truck through. Whether the scope gets tightened in the final rule depends on how loud civil liberties and commercial drone groups are in the docket. There is no constituency for a narrower rule unless the constituency files comments saying so.

Two open questions worth naming. The 9,000-facility scenario the FAA used to build its $21 to $31 million annualized cost estimate is the agency’s own modeling input, not a hard projection. The actual number of UAFR applications will determine whether commercial operators face a manageable set of restricted zones or a no-fly map covering thousands of fixed sites. The agency is openly asking for comment on whether the 16-sector framework is too narrow or too broad, which is where the real fight in the docket will land. Separately, whether the § 74.250 transit allowance works in practice or gets neutralized by facility security plans that treat the legal right as a paperwork hurdle is something this NPRM cannot resolve. The comment record is where that gets settled.

For the next 60 days, the rule belongs to whoever shows up in the docket. Hat tip to Vic Moss at DSPA for flagging the filing minutes after it hit the public inspection desk this morning.

Sources: Federal Aviation Administration Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Docket No. FAA-2026-4558, May 5, 2026; Federal Register; Executive Order 14305 of June 6, 2025; Public Law 114-190 (FESSA), Section 2209.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.