Does Part 107 require a flight log? No. Here is what to keep anyway.
Short answer: no. Part 107 contains no rule that says a remote pilot must keep a flight log, and none that says an operator must keep a maintenance log. If someone sold you a logbook by telling you the FAA demands it, they were wrong.
The longer answer is that the people who actually pay you, insure you and hire you do want one — and the one time the FAA does want facts from you, it wants them fast. So here is what the rule really asks for, who asks for the rest, and what a log is worth keeping.
What Part 107 actually asks you to keep or produce
The rule is lighter on paperwork than most people assume. What it does require:
- Your certificate and ID, on request. § 107.7 says a remote pilot must present the remote pilot certificate, and identification, to the FAA, the NTSB, the TSA or any federal, state or local law enforcement officer who asks. Each aircraft's registration goes with it.
- Recurrent training within the last 24 calendar months. § 107.65 is the only recency rule in Part 107: an initial knowledge test or the recurrent training, completed within the previous 24 calendar months. It is a training record, not a flight record. Nothing in Part 107 says you must have flown recently.
- An accident report within ten calendar days. § 107.9 gives you no later than ten calendar days to report an operation that caused serious injury or loss of consciousness, or damage to property other than the aircraft above $500. To write that report you need the date, the time, the place, the aircraft, the pilot and what happened — which is a flight log entry, whether or not you call it one.
- A preflight, with nothing written down. § 107.49 lists what the remote pilot must assess and check before every flight: weather, airspace, people and property, the control link, the power available. It does not ask for a written record of any of it.
Two honest footnotes. A waiver can add recordkeeping of its own — the special provisions on a BVLOS or over-people waiver often do, so read yours. And "the FAA doesn't require a log" is not the same as "the FAA never asks": after an accident or a complaint, an inspector can ask to see what you have. If the answer is a shrug, that is its own kind of record.
Who does ask for the log
Your insurer, when you claim. This is the one that bites. SkyWatch, a drone insurer, puts it plainly: "Any claim requires detailed documentation. Date and time of incident, weather conditions, aircraft condition before flight, maintenance history, flight purpose, and pilot qualifications all factor into claim processing," and "missing records delay claims or result in denials." (SkyWatch on record-keeping.) The claim form for a crash asks for the flight log of that flight. If the only copy is in a controller that went into the lake, you have a problem that a log would have solved.
Your insurer, when it prices you. At least one drone insurer will price on your logs: SkyWatch reads shared flight logs into a safety score, and the top score earns "a 30% premium discount"; pilots "can submit their flight logs before making a purchase in order to reduce their liability and hull premiums." (SkyWatch on lowering your cost.) Those are telemetry logs from the flight controller, not a notebook — but the principle is the one that matters: a documented flying history is something an underwriter can price, and an undocumented one is not. BWI, a broker that writes commercial drone policies, says the same in fewer words: "log flights properly, and maintain safety documentation. A clean record equals better premiums." (BWI on drone insurance pricing.) Nobody promises you a discount for a logbook. They do say the record is how you make your case.
Your client, before the job. Larger clients and prime contractors run vendor prequalification: proof of insurance, pilot certificates, sometimes your safety record and how you maintain the fleet. The forms vary; the pattern is that the questions are easy to answer from a log and hard to answer from memory.
You, later. Which airframe has the most hours. Which battery is on its two-hundredth cycle. Whether the gimbal fault on the coastal job was the first or the third. Whether the pilot you are about to put on a two-day shoot has flown at all this quarter. None of that is regulation. All of it is how a fleet stays running, and all of it comes out of the same log.
What a useful log holds
Per flight, one line is enough if the line has the right things in it:
| Field | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| Date, start time, duration | The claim form, the accident report, and every "when did that happen" |
| Location | Airspace and the site; also the first thing an adjuster asks |
| Aircraft, by registration | Ties the hours to the airframe, and the airframe to its maintenance |
| Pilot in command | The certificate that was responsible; the person whose recency this counts toward |
| Purpose, and the client | Turns a flight into billable work, and a month of flights into a job history |
| Weather as you saw it | § 107.49 asks you to assess it; writing it down costs ten seconds and settles arguments later |
| Anything unusual | The near miss, the warning light, the swap to a spare — the entries you will search for |
Per aircraft, keep the running totals the per-flight lines produce: hours and cycles, what maintenance was done and when, which batteries it flew on. That is the "maintenance history" an insurer names, and it is the same data, added up.
Keeping it honest, and keeping it light
A log that is inflated is worse than no log, because the first inconsistency an adjuster finds discounts every other line. A log that is a chore stops being kept by March. Three habits keep it both honest and alive:
- Write it at the flight line, not at the kitchen table. The entry is accurate when it is made in the minutes after landing. Reconstructed a week later, it is a guess with a date on it.
- Record where the entry came from. Typed by the pilot, imported from the controller, or synced from a service like AirData — each is fine, and each is worth more when it says which it is.
- Log the boring flights. The value of a log is its completeness. Ten flights a week for a year, all logged, is a fleet history; the memorable ones alone are an anecdote.
The FAA does not need your flight log. The insurer settling your claim, the client vetting you for a contract, and the version of you who has to explain a battery fire next spring all do. Keep one for them.
Tobren Operations is being built around this record — the flight log, the aircraft history and the crew behind them, in one place. It is not for sale yet. If you want to know when it is, the Operations page will take your email.