Beyond the Open Category — The Specific Category and Standard Scenarios

The Open category covers most flying, but it has hard edges: line of sight only, 120 metres, no flying over crowds, under 25 kg. The moment your operation needs to cross one of those lines — flying beyond visual line of sight, or over people at higher risk — you're into the Specific category. It isn't a barrier, but it does work differently.

Risk assessment, not fixed rules

Where the Open category gives you fixed limits to stay inside, the Specific category asks you to show that your particular operation is safe. The standard tool for that is a structured risk assessment — often called SORA, a Specific Operations Risk Assessment — which you submit to your national aviation authority to obtain an operational authorisation.

That sounds heavy, and for a genuinely novel operation it can be. But for common operations, there's a shortcut.

Standard Scenarios

To save every operator from writing a risk assessment from scratch for routine work, Europe defines Standard Scenarios (STS) — pre-approved operation types with a fixed set of conditions. If your flight fits one, you don't need a full authorisation; you simply declare that you're operating within that scenario.

The two defined scenarios cover the most common higher-risk cases: flying within line of sight over a controlled ground area in a populated environment, and flying beyond line of sight, with observers, over a controlled area in a sparsely populated one.

The Specific category has a reputation for being the complicated one. Most of that complexity disappears the moment your operation fits a Standard Scenario.

Getting there

Moving into the Specific category usually means more thorough pilot training and a clear operations manual for what you're doing. It's a bigger step than the Open category exams — but a structured one. We help operators work out whether a Standard Scenario covers their work, or whether they need a full authorisation, before they invest in the training.