C-DRONE GUIDE · 23 JULY 2026

Flying a drone BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) in France: STS-01/STS-02 scenarios, SORA, professional missions and price

A company that used to inspect its power lines under the former national S2 scenario, a farm operator treating large plots under S3, a local authority monitoring its drinking-water network with partial beyond-visual-line-of-sight flight: all three authorisations stopped existing on 31 December 2025. Since 1 January 2026, France applies the same framework as the rest of the European Union — two standard scenarios, STS-01 and STS-02, and a harmonised SORA methodology for anything beyond them. For any mission that goes past strict visual-line-of-sight flight — linear inspection, large-area mapping, long-distance monitoring — understanding exactly what these scenarios allow, and when to move to a bespoke study instead, now determines the operator's compliance as much as the flight's technical feasibility.

Published on 23 July 2026, reviewed on 28 July 2026 — regulations in force as of July 2026.

What changed for operators who flew beyond visual line of sight before 2026

The national scenarios S1, S2 and S3, which had framed French professional flights since 2012, lapsed on 31 December 2025 — our reference guide to 2026 drone regulations covers this whole transition in detail, aircraft classes included. Any operator who flew under one of these scenarios must file a new activity declaration on AlphaTango before their first flight of the year, stating which European standard scenario(s) they now use — STS-01, STS-02 — or that they hold a specific-operation authorisation issued after a SORA study.

This shift changes nothing about the goal of a mission — inspecting a structure, mapping a plot, monitoring a site — but it changes the technical conditions for reaching that goal beyond visual line of sight: that is precisely the case of STS-02, the scenario that has made most professional beyond-visual-line-of-sight missions possible in France since 2026.

STS-01 and STS-02: what each scenario actually allows

The STS-01 scenario covers visual-line-of-sight (VLOS) flights over a controlled ground area, including in populated environments. It requires a class C5 drone (or a C3 fitted with an accessory kit), a flight height capped at 120 m, and a ground area kept under the operator's control for the whole flight.

The STS-02 scenario opens up beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) flight, within a stricter framework: the ground area is also controlled, the environment must be sparsely populated, the drone must be class C6, and height stays capped at 120 m. The maximum horizontal distance between the remote pilot and the aircraft is 1 km without an observer, extended to 2 km with an authorised observer positioned along the flight path. This is the scenario that makes most linear inspection missions possible — a power line, a railway track, a pipeline — along a route that visual-line-of-sight flight alone could not cover in a single mission.

In both cases, the remote pilot must hold the CATS theory certificate — 40 questions in 60 minutes (30 for holders of the A2 exam), a 75% pass mark, €30 at a DGAC OCEANE exam centre, valid for five years — on top of the basic A1/A3 or A2 training of the open category, detailed in our guide to A1/A3 training and the A2 certificate.

SORA and PDRA: when standard scenarios are not enough

A mission more ambitious than an STS-02 — over 2 km, flying over a populated area, or a genuinely autonomous flight with no intermediate observer — falls outside the standard scenarios and requires the specific category in its full form: either a PDRA (predefined risk assessment), a predefined operating model published by EASA for recurring use cases, or a SORA (specific operations risk assessment) study carried out by the operator itself, now in its version 2.5, in force since 29 September 2025. This methodology, developed by the regulators grouped in the international JARUS body and validated in France by the DGAC, classifies the ground and air risk of the planned mission to determine the level of technical and operational robustness required.

A study published in 2025 in the journal Quality and Reliability Engineering International by Zheng, Zhou and Ma points to a structural limit of the classic SORA method: its risk model relies on discrete qualitative classes, which lack precision given the real diversity of missions — one of the reasons for the administrative heaviness regularly held against the framework — and the authors propose an alternative quantitative model to refine ground and air risk assessment (see the study on Google Scholar). In practice, for a professional operator, that finding translates into a concrete lead time: a full SORA file is usually prepared with the support of a specialised consultancy, over several weeks, whereas an STS-01 or STS-02 declaration is filed in a few days.

The professional missions BVLOS makes possible

Beyond-visual-line-of-sight flight changes the scale of linear inspection missions: a power line inspection or a railway track inspection that, under visual line of sight, required moving the pilot every few hundred metres, now takes far fewer flights under STS-02, with observers spread along the route instead of a pilot walking continuously under the aircraft. The same logic applies to leak detection on a drinking-water network, to forest-fire prevention patrols over a large forest, or to precision agriculture on plots well beyond the range a single operator can cover in visual line of sight.

A study published in late 2025 in Scientific Reports by Al-Haddad, Khalid, Tariq, Mrah, Flah, Tazay and Jaber proposes a framework for assessing the reliability of drone inspection missions on power and energy infrastructure: every site to inspect is classified as suitable, at risk, or infeasible for a given flight, based on fleet size, sensor range and available endurance (see the study on Google Scholar). That planning logic lines up very concretely with what an STS-02 operation requires: distance to the observer, battery endurance and radio-link range become mission parameters in their own right, not mere secondary technical constraints.

What to plan for: steps and price of a BVLOS mission in 2026

The cost of a beyond-visual-line-of-sight mission mainly depends on the scenario used and the administrative preparation it requires. Orders of magnitude observed in France in 2026:

On top of these amounts, as with any professional mission, comes professional third-party liability insurance matched to the declared operation, and a systematic check of regulated zones on the Géoportail map — an area that is sparsely populated under STS-02 is not necessarily open to flight for other aviation reasons. The switch to an all-European framework changes nothing about the penalties that apply to a non-compliant flight: they stay the same, only the compliance framework has changed.

Frequently asked questions about BVLOS flight and STS scenarios

Can an operator who flew under S2 or S3 carry on unchanged? No: those national scenarios lapsed on 31 December 2025, and a new STS-01 or STS-02 declaration must be filed on AlphaTango, with a drone that meets the required C5 or C6 class.

Is STS-02 enough for every beyond-visual-line-of-sight mission? No: beyond 2 km with an observer, over a populated area, or for a genuinely autonomous flight, a PDRA or a full SORA study is required, subject to DGAC approval.

Is specific training needed to fly under STS-01 or STS-02? Yes: the CATS theory certificate, obtained at an OCEANE centre after preparation online or with an approved provider, separate from the open-category certificate.

Does the drone itself need to change? In most cases yes: STS-01 requires a class C5 (or a C3 with an accessory kit), STS-02 a class C6 — an aircraft that flew under a former national scenario is not automatically compliant with the new classes.

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