Where you may fly

Ask a pilot what worries them before a flight and few say "which subcategory am I in". Most mean something closer to "am I even allowed to fly here". That second question has two separate answers, from two separate legal systems, and mixing them up is the mistake this page exists to prevent.

How close you may fly to people is set by your subcategory, A1, A2 or A3, and that rule is the same across the whole EASA area; see the class marks guide for how the subcategories work. Where you may fly at all, independent of who is nearby, is set by geographical zones, and those are drawn by each member state on its own map. Article 15 of Regulation (EU) 2019/947 is the provision that lets them do it: member states may designate zones for reasons of safety, security, privacy, protection of personal data or the environment, and inside a designated zone they may prohibit UAS operations outright, restrict them to specific conditions, or require a prior authorisation.

That single article is also why this page cannot hand you a definitive answer for your field. It hands you the mechanism, the two European limits that apply everywhere, and the habit of checking the one national source that is actually current for wherever you are standing.

The height limit, and what it is measured from

In the open category, an unmanned aircraft has to stay within 120 metres of the closest point of the surface of the earth. That phrasing matters: the limit follows the terrain directly beneath the aircraft, not a fixed altitude above your take-off point, so climbing a hillside means climbing with the ground, not levelling off once you are 120 metres above where you launched.

• Maximum height, open category120 metres
• Measured fromthe closest point of the surface of the earth below the aircraft, not the take-off point

Keeping the aircraft in sight, and what FPV goggles change

The same set of provisions requires visual line of sight: the remote pilot keeps the unmanned aircraft in unaided sight throughout the flight. Goggles remove that. Flying FPV does not get an exemption from VLOS, it gets a substitute for it: an unmanned aircraft observer standing next to the pilot, keeping the aircraft in unaided visual contact, and close enough to warn the pilot of obstacles or other aircraft without needing a radio. The observer is not optional decoration. Without one, an FPV flight is not VLOS-compliant at all.

What tends to be restricted, as categories rather than a list

Every EASA member state runs its own geographical zones and no two maps match, so a page written for a general European audience cannot hand you actual boundaries. What is worth knowing is the shape the restrictions take almost everywhere, so you know roughly what to expect before you open the map:

• Airports and aerodromes, including the approach and departure paths beyond the perimeter fence, not just the airfield itself.
• Nature protection areas: national parks and nature reserves, often with conditions rather than a flat ban.
• Crowds and events. Part of this is already European: Article 4 of the same regulation bars open-category flights over assemblies of people regardless of subcategory, and national zones frequently add temporary restrictions around specific events on top of that.
• Industrial sites and government or diplomatic buildings.
• Hospitals.
• Prisons and other secure custodial facilities.
• Motorways, railways and other transport corridors.

Treat that as a list of categories to expect, not a list of places. It is not exhaustive, it will not match any one country's actual map, and reading it is not a substitute for checking.

Germany worked through: § 21h LuftVO

Germany is a useful worked example precisely because its national implementation is unusually explicit: § 21h LuftVO lists categories of geographical zone directly in the text of the regulation, several with a lateral distance attached, rather than leaving every boundary to a map with no legal text behind it. These figures are Germany-specific; do not read them onto any other country.

Nature reserves and national parks sit outside that distance pattern: § 21h ties them to the consent of the nature protection authority, or to flying above 100 metres for non-recreational purposes, rather than to a fixed lateral figure. The provision runs to eleven categories in total; this table is a selection of it, not the full text.

Privacy is a different body of law

Nothing above is about privacy in the everyday sense, and that is the trap. Article 15 lets a member state draw a zone for privacy reasons, but most of aviation law, the subcategory rules, the height limit, VLOS, the zone map itself, is concerned with collision risk and third-party safety, not with what your camera records. A flight can clear every one of those checks, correct subcategory, under the height limit, inside a permitted zone, and still be unlawful the moment the footage identifies a person without a legal basis for processing it. That is data protection law and, depending on the country, separate civil or state privacy law, sitting alongside aviation law rather than inside it. Flying over a neighbour's garden and keeping the footage is the case that catches people out most often: the flight itself can be entirely legal, and the recording still is not yours to keep or publish.

How to actually check

The only way to answer "where may I fly" for a specific field on a specific day is the national geo-zone map, not this page or any other written guide. For Germany, that is dipul (Digitale Plattform Unbemannte Luftfahrt), built by DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport, showing the zones designated under § 21h above; DFS's joint venture Droniq also publishes a consumer map app built on the same official zone data. Every other EASA state runs an equivalent; the EASA geo-zones page links to each country's map. Check the specific location before the specific flight, not once when you buy the aircraft.

Put together, the sequence is: work out your subcategory with the EU category tool, confirm you are registered as an operator if the criteria apply, stay under 120 metres and in VLOS, or with a properly positioned observer if you are flying FPV, and check the national geo-zone map for the exact place before you fly. If you have not flown anything yet, start here instead; for the rest of the section, see regulation.