How to verify a Part 107 certificate before a pilot flies for you

Knowing how to verify a Part 107 certificate is basic due diligence for anyone putting a pilot in the air under their company's name, and the stakes are not hypothetical. A subcontracted pilot without a valid certificate turns every flight into an illegal operation, voids assumptions your insurance was priced on, and hands a client's legal team an easy narrative if anything goes wrong. Verification is cheap, takes minutes, and uses tools the FAA provides publicly. The programs that skip it are relying on a resume line.

This article lays out a three layer check: the certificate itself, the FAA's public registry, and the currency requirement the registry cannot see. It then covers how to turn verification from a hiring day ritual into a standing program practice, because a certificate check that happened once, in an email thread nobody can find, protects exactly no one when the question comes back years later.

Start with the certificate and the person holding it

The first layer is the document. Part 107 requires a remote pilot to carry the certificate and identification while exercising its privileges and to present both on request, so asking a pilot for the physical certificate and a government ID before they fly for you mirrors exactly what an inspector or officer may do in the field. Check that the name on the certificate matches the ID, note the certificate number and issue date, and be suspicious of anyone who can produce only a photograph of a card they cannot present.

The certificate has no expiration date printed on it, which surprises people doing their first verification. The credential itself does not expire. What lapses is the holder's aeronautical knowledge recency, covered in the third layer below, which is why a genuine card from 2017 tells you the person passed a test in 2017 and nothing else. Layer one establishes that a real certificate exists and belongs to the person in front of you. It deliberately claims nothing more.

Confirm it against the FAA's registry

The second layer is independent confirmation, and the FAA provides it through the FAA's Airmen Inquiry tool, the public search over the airman certification database. A name search returns the certificates and ratings the FAA has issued to that person, including the remote pilot certificate, which lets you confirm the credential exists in the government's records rather than only in the plastic. Certificate holder status is public information, so a pilot's absence from the registry is a finding, not a privacy artifact.

Know the tool's deliberate limits before you rely on it. The FAA does not display Social Security numbers, certificate numbers, or dates of birth, so you cannot use the registry to recover or cross check the number on the card. Airmen can ask the FAA to withhold their address information from public release, so location details may be absent while the certificate record still displays. The registry answers one question with authority, does this person hold this certificate, and the careful verifier asks it exactly that question, matching the legal name from the ID rather than a nickname from an email signature.

Check the currency the registry cannot show

The third layer is the one most verifications miss. Exercising Part 107 privileges requires completed recurrent training within the previous 24 calendar months, and the public registry does not display training recency at all. A pilot can appear in the registry, hold a genuine card, and still be ineligible to fly commercially because their training window closed. The check is direct: ask for the completion certificate from the FAA's free online recurrent course and read the date, since the 24 month clock runs from that completion to the end of the same calendar month two years later.

Once verified, a pilot's status becomes an operational fact the program should use, which is where verification connects to assignment. A roster that records who is verified and current is the input for matching each pilot's access to their assigned jobs, so the people scheduled onto client work are drawn from the pool the program has already checked, and a lapsed pilot drops out of scheduling the day their training date passes. Verification that never reaches the scheduling layer is trivia. Verification wired into who flies what is control.

Verification is a record, not a moment

Every layer above produces evidence, and the evidence is the point. A verification that lives in someone's memory of a phone screen is unfalsifiable and unauditable in equal measure. The durable version is a dated entry in the pilot's file: who checked, on what date, the certificate number and issue date observed, the registry result, and the recurrent training completion date with the document attached. That entry is what you produce when an insurer, a client audit, or an investigator asks how you knew this pilot was legal to fly.

Records also solve the re-verification problem. Certificates get surrendered, revoked, and suspended, training windows close, and a check from two years ago has quietly aged out of usefulness. A program that records verification dates can set a rhythm, re-checking currency on the training cycle and re-confirming the registry entry annually or at contract renewal, and can prove the rhythm exists. The question that eventually arrives is never did you check once. It is how do you know he was current on the day of the flight.

Common mistakes in verifying pilot certificates

Accepting a photo of the card. A picture proves a card existed at some point, in someone's hand. The rule contemplates a physical certificate presented with matching identification, and your verification should meet the same standard an inspector would apply.

Stopping at the plastic. A card without a registry check leaves you trusting the printer. The Airmen Inquiry search takes two minutes and confirms the credential in the FAA's own records under the pilot's legal name.

Ignoring recurrent training. The registry cannot show recency, and the card never expires. A verification that skips the 24 month training check regularly approves pilots who cannot legally fly commercial work that day.

Trying to verify by certificate number. The public database intentionally omits certificate numbers, so a number cannot be looked up or confirmed there. Verify by legal name against identification and record the number from the card yourself.

Leaving no trail. An undocumented check protects nobody once questions arrive. Date the verification, name the checker, attach the training completion, and file it where the program can find it years later.

FAQ

What is the fastest way to verify a Part 107 certificate?

Ask for the physical certificate with matching government ID, then run the pilot's legal name through the FAA's public Airmen Inquiry search. Together those confirm a real credential in the government's records, usually in under five minutes.

Does the FAA registry show if a pilot is current?

No. The registry shows certificates and ratings, and it deliberately omits recurrent training recency along with certificate numbers and birth dates. Currency is checked by asking for the pilot's training completion certificate and reading the date.

Why is a pilot I hired missing from Airmen Inquiry?

Treat it as a red flag to resolve before flight. Search variations of the legal name from their ID first, since nicknames and misspellings cause misses. Address details can be withheld by request, but certificate holder status itself is public.

How often should a program re-verify its pilots?

Re-check training currency on the 24 month cycle, since that is what lapses, and re-confirm the registry entry at least annually or at contract renewal. Record each check with a date and checker so the program can prove its rhythm.

Closing thought

Verifying a certificate is three short checks: the card against the person, the person against the registry, and the training date against the calendar. None requires special access, and together they close the gap that an unqualified pilot would otherwise fly through under your company's name. The discipline that separates real programs is the fourth step, writing it down, because the verification you cannot prove later is functionally the one you never did.

If you are vetting pilots before they fly under your company's name, FlybyOps was built for the operational record problem at the center of regulated drone work. A pilot registry tracking certificates, verification dates, and training currency, role-based access control that keeps scheduling drawing from verified crew, a document vault for completion certificates, and an append-only audit log are all part of how the platform keeps every pilot's certificate and verification date filed where an audit can find them.