A federal grand jury in Dallas has indicted a 24-year-old man on four counts accusing him of flying a drone into the airspace of Dallas Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on consecutive nights in June 2025. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas announced the case on Thursday, October 8. Pujan Prashantkumar Gajjar faces up to eight years in federal prison if convicted on all four.

The indictment, returned September 16, alleges Gajjar flew a drone into the runway exclusion zone at Love Field around 11:30 p.m. on June 26, 2025, and that the drone crossed an active runway. The next night, it alleges, he flew the same drone into the restricted airspace around DFW. On both flights, it says, he knowingly and willfully acted as an airman without an airman’s certificate. Agents arrested him on September 22.

Twelve days earlier, DroneXL reported on a Charlotte pilot who pleaded guilty to flying between two live runways. He faces up to a year.

The Airman Counts Carry Three Years Each, the Runway Count One

The press release does not name the statutes, but its wording does. “Runway exclusion zone” is the term 18 U.S.C. § 39B uses, and that offense carries a maximum of one year. Acting as an airman without a certificate, 49 U.S.C. § 46306, carries up to three years per count.

The 2018 law that created the runway offense defines the zone as a rectangle half a mile wide, running one statute mile past each end of an active runway at a Class B, C or D airport. It does not require that any aircraft was put at risk. Crossing the runway, the one operational detail in the release, changes nothing about the statutory maximum.

If the four counts come from those two statutes, eight years adds up one way: the two airport flights at a year apiece, and two three-year counts under § 46306. The DFW count could instead be the one-year national defense airspace offense, 49 U.S.C. § 46307, and the total would not move. The release describes the airman allegation as covering both flights and says nothing about registration, a separate three-year offense under the same section. DroneXL has not seen the indictment, so the count structure is my reading of the arithmetic, not a quote from the charging document. Gajjar made his initial appearance on September 22 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Renee Harris Toliver.

A Hobbyist Can Be Charged as an Airman After Entering Class B Without Approval

The release does not say whether Gajjar flew for fun or for money. For the certificate counts, that may not matter. A recreational pilot needs no FAA certificate only while the flight stays inside the limits of 49 U.S.C. § 44809, one of which is authorization before entering Class B.

Both Dallas airports sit under Class B. Pilots who need to fly near them request that authorization through LAANC before takeoff. A flight that breaks any of the recreational limits falls under the rules that apply to everyone else, and among them is 14 CFR 107.12: nobody flies a small drone without a remote pilot certificate, or a certificated pilot supervising. That certificate is an airman certificate, which is why a hobbyist with no Part 107 card who flies into an airport’s airspace without approval can be charged the way a person flying a Cessna without a license would be.

The FBI Dallas field office and the Federal Air Marshal Service investigated, with help from the Federal Aviation Administration, and an Assistant U.S. Attorney from the office’s National Security Section is prosecuting. FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock said in the release that drones in restricted airport airspace threaten “pilots, passengers, and crew in the air as well as communities on the ground.” Rothrock is a familiar name on this beat. He was the acting special agent in charge in Baltimore in February 2024, when federal prosecutors charged the pilot who stopped the AFC Championship with the same airman offense.

Neither the release nor FOX 4’s report says how investigators tied the two flights to Gajjar, or what happened in the 15 months between the flights and the indictment. In Charlotte, the airport’s drone-detection system flagged the flight the moment it started, and federal marshals tracked it for seven minutes.

Raybould’s Office Brought the Same Airman Charge at Dallas Stadium in June

U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould’s office brought the certificate count during the World Cup. On June 27, agents traced a drone spotted over Dallas Stadium before Argentina played Jordan to an Arlington man who admitted he lacked the FAA credentials, and charged him with operating without an airman’s certificate.

The sentencing record on that count is thin. Matthew Hebert, whose drone halted the AFC Championship game in Baltimore in January 2024, pleaded guilty in March 2024 to a misdemeanor airspace violation and received one year of probation and a $500 fine. He had told investigators he relied on his drone’s app and did not know the stadium was restricted. Xiaodong He, the Chinese tourist charged with the airspace offense and the airman offense over a 12-minute flight near Kennedy Space Center, pleaded guilty to the airspace count on September 18. What became of his airman count is not yet in the public record.

Charlotte’s Marco Antonio Ochoa pleaded guilty on September 22 to a single § 39B count for a seven-minute client video shot from a park between two active runways. That was the same day federal agents arrested Gajjar in Dallas. Ochoa has no sentencing date yet.

An indictment is an allegation, and Gajjar is presumed innocent.

DroneXL’s Take

The flight the indictment describes, a drone crossing an active runway at Love Field at 11:30 at night and the same drone inside DFW’s airspace the next night, is the flight Congress had in mind when it wrote the runway exclusion zone into law in 2018. If that is what happened, two nights at two airports is a pattern, and the law doesn’t ask whether anyone was on short final at the time.

The eight-year figure is a prosecutor’s ceiling. The one offense that describes the dangerous act is worth a year of it, and in the only airman-certificate case DroneXL has followed to a sentence, Hebert’s, the certificate count produced no prison time: he pleaded to the airspace misdemeanor and got probation. I expect this case to end nearer that outcome than the headline number, and if it doesn’t, I’d expect the second night to be the reason.

Recreational pilots should read the certificate counts as the lesson. The exception that lets you fly without a Part 107 ends the moment you enter Class B airspace without a LAANC approval. Past that line, the government can charge you as an unlicensed airman at three years per flight, whatever you were flying and whoever you were flying for.

Sources: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas, FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth, The Baltimore Sun, 18 U.S.C. § 39B, 49 U.S.C. § 46306, 49 U.S.C. § 46307, 49 U.S.C. § 44809, 14 CFR 107.12

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