What is Class D airspace, and can a drone fly in it?

Class D is charted as a blue dashed line around an airport with an operating control tower, with its ceiling in a dashed blue box. A Part 107 flight there is allowed, but only with prior authorization from ATC — § 107.41 lists Class D alongside Class B and Class C, and flying below 400 feet does not exempt the operation.

What does a dashed magenta line mean on a sectional?

Class E airspace designated as a surface area for an airport. The airport under it usually has no control tower, which is why the symbol catches people out: controlled airspace reaches the ground there anyway, and § 107.41 requires prior ATC authorization inside the lateral boundaries just as it does in Class D.

What is Class G airspace?

Uncontrolled airspace, and on a sectional it is read by absence: it is what is there where no boundary or vignette says otherwise, up to the floor of the overlying controlled airspace. No ATC authorization is required to operate in it under Part 107 — every other rule in the part still is.

Which airspace classes need ATC authorization for a Part 107 flight?

Four cases, and § 107.41 names them: Class B, Class C, Class D, and within the lateral boundaries of the surface area of Class E designated for an airport. Everything else — Class G, and Class E that begins at 700 or 1,200 feet AGL above you — needs none.

What do numbers like 100 over 40 mean next to a boundary?

A ceiling over a floor, both in hundreds of feet MSL with the last two zeros eliminated: 100 over 40 is airspace from 4,000 feet MSL to 10,000 feet MSL. SFC in the bottom slot means the airspace reaches the surface, which is the difference between airspace over your head and airspace around you.

Airspace classes

A remote pilot does not need to recite what Class C is. They need to look at a chart, work out what they are standing under, and know whether it means asking ATC first. That is a reading skill, so this page is a reading exercise before it is a reference.

Read the excerpt

Each excerpt below is drawn from numbers by this site, using the symbology the FAA’s Chart Users’ Guide defines — the colours and line styles are the real ones, so what you learn here transfers to a real sectional. They are not FAA charts, and the answer arrives with the document it came from.

Airspace classes 1 of 8

What class of airspace does the excerpt show?

The key

Six symbols and one absence. The right-hand column is the only thing the class means to a Part 107 operation — four of the seven rows make you ask ATC first, and the rest do not.

Class	On the chart	What it costs you
Class B UA.II.A.K1a	Solid BLUE lines, usually several rings, with each sector’s ceiling and floor in solid blue figures.	Prior ATC authorization required (§ 107.41).
Class C UA.II.A.K1b	Solid MAGENTA lines, with the sector altitudes in solid magenta figures.	Prior ATC authorization required (§ 107.41).
Class D UA.II.A.K1c	A blue DASHED line. The ceiling sits in a dashed blue box beside it.	Prior ATC authorization required (§ 107.41).
Class E to the surface UA.II.A.K1d	A magenta DASHED line, around an airport that usually has no control tower.	Prior ATC authorization required — this is the fourth case named in § 107.41, and the one most often missed.
Class E from 700 ft AGL UA.II.A.K1d	A magenta VIGNETTE — a soft wide band, not a line.	No authorization needed below the floor: under the band you are in Class G.
Class E from 1,200 ft AGL UA.II.A.K1d	A blue vignette, where a floor other than 700 feet abuts uncontrolled airspace. Elsewhere Class E simply exists at 1,200 ft AGL unless designated otherwise.	No authorization needed below the floor.
Class G UA.II.A.K1e	Nothing. Class G is what is left where no other boundary is drawn — it is read off the chart by absence.	No ATC authorization required. Every other Part 107 rule still applies.

Four reads, in this order

The order is what makes it quick. Line style cuts six possibilities to two, colour picks one of them, and the numbers only mean something once you know which class printed them.

1
The airport symbol’s colour

Blue means an operating control tower; magenta means no tower. It is the fastest read on the chart and it tells you what kind of airspace to expect before you have looked at a single line.
2
Solid line or dashed line

Solid is Class B or Class C. Dashed is Class D or Class E to the surface. A soft wide band is neither: it is a vignette, and it marks a floor above your head rather than a boundary beside you.
3
Blue or magenta

Within each pair the colour decides. Solid blue is B and solid magenta is C; dashed blue is D and dashed magenta is Class E to the surface.
4
The figures, read as a fraction

Ceiling above the line, floor below it, both in hundreds of feet MSL with the last two zeros dropped — so 41 over SFC is a ceiling of 4,100 feet MSL over airspace that reaches the ground. SFC is the one that changes your day.

Where this sits on the test

Airspace is its own area of operation on the UAG test, and chart reading is the part of it candidates say is hardest to practise. The area set below mixes these figures with written questions on the rules that hang off them — weather minimums, authorizations, operations near airports — and reports the same ACS codes a real Airman Knowledge Test Report prints.

Practise the airspace area What the test asks

Frequently asked

What is Class D airspace, and can a drone fly in it?: Class D is charted as a blue dashed line around an airport with an operating control tower, with its ceiling in a dashed blue box. A Part 107 flight there is allowed, but only with prior authorization from ATC — § 107.41 lists Class D alongside Class B and Class C, and flying below 400 feet does not exempt the operation.
What does a dashed magenta line mean on a sectional?: Class E airspace designated as a surface area for an airport. The airport under it usually has no control tower, which is why the symbol catches people out: controlled airspace reaches the ground there anyway, and § 107.41 requires prior ATC authorization inside the lateral boundaries just as it does in Class D.
What is Class G airspace?: Uncontrolled airspace, and on a sectional it is read by absence: it is what is there where no boundary or vignette says otherwise, up to the floor of the overlying controlled airspace. No ATC authorization is required to operate in it under Part 107 — every other rule in the part still is.
Which airspace classes need ATC authorization for a Part 107 flight?: Four cases, and § 107.41 names them: Class B, Class C, Class D, and within the lateral boundaries of the surface area of Class E designated for an airport. Everything else — Class G, and Class E that begins at 700 or 1,200 feet AGL above you — needs none.
What do numbers like 100 over 40 mean next to a boundary?: A ceiling over a floor, both in hundreds of feet MSL with the last two zeros eliminated: 100 over 40 is airspace from 4,000 feet MSL to 10,000 feet MSL. SFC in the bottom slot means the airspace reaches the surface, which is the difference between airspace over your head and airspace around you.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of the documents below, with the date it was read and what the document says about its own currency. Regulations change by amendment; where a source has moved on since the date shown, the source is right and this page is out of date.

FAA Aeronautical Information Services — Aeronautical Chart Users’ Guide Read August 27, 2026· Edition effective 9 July 2026 The authority for chart symbology, and the document the Remote Pilot Study Guide points at rather than reproducing. ⚠️ Added 2026-08-27 after an audit found two questions on this site sourced to the study guide for chart colours the study guide never states — the facts were right, the citation was not. Everything this site says about what a line or a colour MEANS on a sectional now comes from here.
14 CFR part 107 — Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (eCFR) Read August 27, 2026· eCFR reports title 14 up to date as of 2026-08-25 The regulation itself, and the only acceptable source on this site for an operating limit, a category, an eligibility rule or a recency rule. Amendment 107-8 (86 FR 4381, 15 January 2021) is the one that rewrote night operations and added operations over human beings.
FAA-G-8082-22 — Remote Pilot – Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Guide Read August 27, 2026· August 2016 — predates Amendment 107-8 ⚠️ USE FOR SUBJECT MATTER, NEVER FOR A RULE. Airspace classes, METAR and TAF decoding, density altitude, load factor, physiology, radio procedure and airport data are unchanged and are sourced here. Its regulations chapter, its night rules and its silence on operations over people are all out of date, and a question sourced here on any of those is a bug.

Page facts last verified September 3, 2026.

Part 107 Drills is independent practice material. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration, PSI Services LLC, or any knowledge testing centre. Every question here is original and none is taken from any actual FAA knowledge test. Regulatory text and FAA publications are works of the United States Government and are in the public domain; where this site states a rule, it cites the section it came from and the date that section was read.