§ 107.49 turns knowing your aircraft into a specific checklist that the remote pilot in command — the person responsible for safe operation of the aircraft during the flight — must work through before every flight. First comes an assessment of the operating environment — local weather, local airspace and any flight restrictions, the people and property on the surface below, and any other ground hazards. This is not a glance out the window; it is the same risk-to-persons-and-property thinking that underlies the whole rule, applied concretely to the site in front of you. Next, everyone directly participating in the operation — not just the remote PIC (pilot in command) — must be briefed on operating conditions, emergency and contingency procedures, roles and responsibilities, and potential hazards, so a visual observer or second crew member is not improvising if something goes wrong.

The remaining preflight duties are mechanical but no less mandatory: confirm that every control link between the control station and the aircraft is working properly, verify there is enough available power for the intended flight time, and make sure anything attached to or carried by the aircraft is secured in a way that will not degrade its flight characteristics or controllability. If the flight will operate over human beings — that is, flying the aircraft above a person who is not directly participating in the operation and who is not under a covered structure (such as a building) or inside a stationary vehicle (such as a parked car) that can provide reasonable protection from a falling aircraft — covered in Chapter 1.4 — the remote PIC must also confirm the aircraft is eligible for the applicable operations-over-people category. The full operations-over-people framework is covered in Chapter 1.4; the categories below simply define which aircraft are eligible to fly under which conditions. § 107.110 sets the Category 1 bar: the aircraft must weigh 0.55 pounds or less on takeoff and have no exposed rotating parts that would lacerate human skin on impact. § 107.120(a) sets the Category 2 bar: the aircraft must not cause an injury equivalent to or greater than a transfer of 11 foot-pounds of kinetic energy from a rigid object. § 107.130(a) raises that bar for Category 3, to 25 foot-pounds. To picture those limits, FAA guidance (Table 8-6) translates them into impact speed for a roughly one-pound drone: the 11-foot-pound Category 2 limit is about an 18-mph impact, and the 25-foot-pound Category 3 limit about 27 mph. § 107.140 replaces the injury test altogether for Category 4, requiring an airworthiness certificate issued under Part 21. None of this is optional paperwork — it is the factual basis for the go or no-go decision the rule assumes you are making deliberately, not by habit.

§ 107.15 sits underneath all of this as the standing rule: the aircraft must be in a condition for safe operation, checked before each flight, and that determination does not expire at takeoff. If at any point during the flight the remote pilot in command knows or has reason to know the aircraft is no longer in a condition for safe operation, continuing the flight is itself a violation. Preflight checks under § 107.49 are how you establish that condition going in; § 107.15(b) is what obligates you to act on new information once you are airborne — a battery reading trending wrong, a control link that stutters, a link that recovers but should not be trusted.