The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a bill on September 15 that would make every small drone manufacturer show new pilots a safety statement built to FAA requirements the first time they activate a drone, then require them to electronically acknowledge each part of it. H.R. 10304, the Drone Safety Statement Modernization Act of 2026, cleared the committee by voice vote as an amended version of the text Rep. James Gallagher (R-Calif.) introduced a week earlier. It goes to the full House next.

Drone makers already owe buyers a safety statement. Congress ordered one in 2016, and the FAA’s version is a print-ready insert for the box.

H.R. 10304 repeals that requirement.

The 2016 Law Reaches The Owner At Delivery And Cites A Repealed Rule

The 2016 requirement, Section 2203 of the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act, only makes manufacturers provide the statement to the owner at the time of delivery. It says nothing about the person who actually flies. Nobody has to read it, and nobody has to confirm they did.

Its content has aged worse than its delivery. Section 2203 tells manufacturers to include FAA-approved language on flying as a model aircraft under Section 336 of the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act. Congress repealed Section 336 in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 and replaced it with 49 U.S.C. 44809, the recreational exception that now requires hobbyists to pass The Recreational UAS Safety Test (TRUST). The statute still describes a rule that has been gone for nearly eight years.

H.R. 10304 Gives The FAA 120 Days To Show What The Statement Must Say

Under the committee-approved text, the FAA sets the statement’s requirements and must publish an example within 120 days of enactment, then review the requirements within 18 months and yearly after that. Manufacturers can use the FAA’s example or write their own, and the agency cannot force its wording on them.

The statement has to cover the rules and where to find them, including which authorizations apply to which kind of flight and pilot certification, plus the Section 44809 recreational rules behind TRUST, which the bill leaves untouched. It must explain temporary flight restrictions and drone-specific airspace limits, and the FAA-approved methods for checking whether a flight in a given piece of airspace is legal, the job the FAA’s B4UFLY service does for recreational pilots today. It closes on safety recommendations and on what happens to pilots who fly unsafely or illegally, spelled out for restricted airspace and for FAA enforcement against anyone who endangers the national airspace system. Each version carries its creation or revision date.

One line closes an exit. Section 44805(h) lets the FAA exempt drones that can’t navigate beyond visual line of sight through advanced flight systems from that section’s safety standards. The bill writes the safety statement out of that exemption, so a basic drone gets no pass.

For DJI buyers, the moment already exists. DJI’s Mini 3 user manual says the drone requires activation in the DJI Fly app before first use.

A One-Time Sign-Off Can’t Warn Pilots About Next Month’s TFR

The acknowledgment happens once, when the initial operator first activates the drone. A temporary flight restriction is temporary by design. The FAA ran nearly 250 of them during the FIFA World Cup, and it said on July 22 that more than 700 unauthorized drones were seized over the tournament.

A statement can teach a new pilot that TFRs exist and what flying into one costs. It can’t tell that pilot about the stadium ring that goes up months after the drone came out of the box. The FAA’s World Cup release doesn’t say how many of those 700 operators were new owners, which is the one number that would show whether an activation screen would have reached them.

The obligation also attaches to the “initial operator.” A drone sold secondhand, or handed down to a family member, reaches its next pilot with the acknowledgment already clicked.

DroneXL’s Take

This is a drone safety rule DroneXL can back without holding its nose: no new ban, no new fee, no new test, just the FAA’s current rules put in front of the person holding the controller at the one moment every new drone passes through. When the FBI’s World Cup count passed 300 in June, I wrote that most of the operators behind it were almost certainly the pilots least likely to check a NOTAM before launch. First power-on is the one moment a manufacturer can reach them before they become that guy.

The weak link is the FAA, not the bill. The same 2016 law ordered the Section 2209 critical-infrastructure rule, which was six years overdue when DroneXL started tracking it in 2023 and only reached a proposal this May. If H.R. 10304 becomes law, watch the 120-day clock on the example statement first and the annual review after it. A statement that falls behind the rules is the 2016 law’s mistake again, on a screen.

Sources: Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, ANS to H.R. 10304, Committee markup results, H.R. 10304 bill status (GovInfo), FAA Section 2203 text, FAA manufacturer’s toolkit, FAA.

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