Registration and remote pilot competency

Two separate obligations apply the moment your drone carries a camera or weighs 250 g or more, and confusing them is the single most common mistake a new pilot makes. You register as the operator: the person or organisation legally responsible for the aircraft. Separately, whoever is holding the controls, the remote pilot, may need to prove competency for the subcategory being flown. For a hobbyist the operator and the pilot are usually the same human, but they are never the same registration, and a checkpoint asking "is this drone registered" is really asking about you as the operator, not about the aircraft.

Who has to register, and the criterion almost everyone misses

Under Regulation (EU) 2019/947, Article 14, an operator must register before flying an unmanned aircraft in the open category if any one of the following is true:

• Take-off mass250 g or more
• Impact energycould transfer more than 80 joules of kinetic energy on impact
• Sensorfitted with a camera or other sensor able to capture personal data, unless the aircraft is classed as a toy under Directive 2009/48/EC

That third line is the one people skip past. A lot of sub-250 g drones sold as "registration not required" carry a camera, and a camera able to capture personal data, which is effectively any camera that streams live video to your phone, triggers registration regardless of weight. Weight alone is not the test; what the aircraft can record is. In the specific category the mass threshold does not apply at all: any UAS operated there needs an operator registration.

Where you register, and why it then works everywhere

You register in the member state where you, as a natural person, have your residence, or where your organisation has its principal place of business, not the country you happen to be flying in. Article 14 is explicit that an operator cannot be registered in more than one member state at a time; move your residence and you register again there instead. What you get back is a unique digital operator registration number, which you then have to display on every aircraft that meets the criteria above.

Registered once, that number is recognised across the other EASA member states without a second registration. A German resident flying in Portugal on holiday operates under their German number; a French tourist flying in Bavaria operates under their own. What changes from country to country is not whether the registration counts, but the local rules on where you may actually fly, which sit outside this page; see the class marks guide for the aircraft side of that.

Germany in practice: registering through the LBA

This section is Germany-specific; other member states run their own national portal with their own fee. In Germany, operator registration runs through the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA), via lba.de, under the national implementation in § 21 LuftVO. You register once online, one registration covers every aircraft you operate, and the application asks for your insurer's name and policy number.

• Fee, natural person€20
• Fee, legal entity€50
• What you receivean electronic operator ID (e-ID), affixed to each aircraft

The LBA's own registration page does not state a fixed validity period for the e-ID itself, unlike the pilot certificates below, which do expire. If that matters for your situation, ask the LBA directly rather than relying on a figure this page cannot source.

Remote pilot competency: A1/A3 first, A2 if you need it

Competency sits with the pilot, not the aircraft, and it is layered by subcategory. For A1 and A3, the open-category subcategories covering everything from sub-250 g flying near people to larger aircraft flown well clear of them, the requirement across the EU is the same shape: free online training followed by an online multiple-choice test, run through your national authority's portal. Pass it, and the certificate is recognised in every EASA state, the same way the operator registration is.

A2 sits on top of that, not instead of it. You need it to fly closer to people than A3 allows with certain aircraft classes. It adds a self-directed practical-flying component plus a second, proctored theory exam sat at an authorised test centre rather than online. A1/A3 is a hard prerequisite; there is no route straight to A2.

The exam format and the pass mark are set by the regulation itself, so they are the same in every member state. The fee and the administration are national. Germany's implementation, run through the LBA, gives the concrete numbers:

Both certificates renew online before they lapse; let one expire and you sit the exam again from scratch. These are LBA figures. Book through a different member state's portal and both the fee and the exact process will differ, even though the underlying EU framework is the same one.

Insurance: two different obligations, not one

EU-level insurance regulation, Regulation (EC) 785/2004, sets minimum liability cover for aircraft operators, but it bites hardest on commercial operations and aircraft over 20 kg, well above what most FPV builds or camera drones weigh. It does not, by itself, force a hobbyist flying a 400 g quad to buy insurance.

Germany fills that gap nationally. Under § 43 LuftVG, the operator of an aircraft, and German law treats unmanned aircraft as aircraft, must hold liability insurance regardless of weight or whether the flying is private or commercial. The registration process above asks for your insurer and policy number for exactly this reason. Toy-classed drones are the one carve-out; nothing else is. Whether your own country applies a blanket rule like Germany's is a question for that country's aviation authority, not something this one example can generalise into.

Minimum age: set nationally, not by the EU

Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2019/947 sets a default minimum age of 16 for a remote pilot, in either the open or the specific category. Member states can move that number: they may lower it, following their own risk-based assessment, by up to 4 years in the open category or up to 2 years in the specific category, but a pilot flying under a lowered age limit is only legal inside that one member state. States may also set an entirely separate age for flying within a model aircraft club or association.

Germany has not lowered the default: the minimum age for a remote pilot in the open and specific categories is 16. The exceptions are the same three that come up elsewhere in this guide: aircraft classed as a toy, privately built aircraft under 250 g, and flying under the direct, hands-on supervision of a remote pilot who already holds the required competency. Outside those three cases, a pilot under 16 is not legally allowed to fly.

Before your first flight

The practical order: work out your subcategory with the EU category tool, register as an operator before you fly anything that meets the criteria above, get the A1/A3 certificate before flying at all in the open category, add A2 only if your planned flying needs it, and check your insurance covers what your national law actually requires rather than assuming the EU minimum is enough. The class marks guide covers the aircraft side of this; if you have not flown anything yet, start here instead. For the rest of the section, see regulation.