One Certificate, Two Doors: Community Colleges vs. the COA Loophole

Starting October 5, the University of Louisiana at Alexandria will offer a Part 107 remote pilot exam prep course, according to WNTZ-TV FOX 48 — one more sign that the credential built for commercial drone work is quietly becoming a fixture of mainstream continuing education. But at nearly the same moment, FLYING Magazine has been documenting the opposite trend: a route by which some public agencies fly drones without any Part 107 pilot in command at all. Both stories are true, and reading them together tells you more about the state of the certificate than either does alone.

The Certificate Is Going Institutional

The LSUA offering, as WNTZ-TV FOX 48 reported, is a straightforward exam-prep course aimed at people who want to pass the FAA's Part 107 aeronautical knowledge test. It's a small item on its own. The pattern behind it is not.

For years, most people earned the certificate the way the writer at Pocketables described in a November 2025 first-person account: self-study, a stack of practice questions, a trip to a testing center, and a pass. That path still works. What's changing is that colleges, workforce programs, and continuing-education arms are now packaging the same material into structured courses — signaling that Part 107 is being treated as a genuine job credential, not a hobbyist's afterthought.

For our audience, that has two practical implications:

• The bar for entry is well understood and repeatable. The knowledge test hasn't gotten mysterious. Whether you study on your own or in a classroom, the exam still covers airspace, weather, loading, operations, and regulations. A course can add accountability and structure; it can't add anything the FAA doesn't test.
• A credential more people hold is a credential worth holding well. As the pipeline widens, the differentiator stops being the card itself and becomes what you can actually do with it — clean airspace planning, solid waiver applications, defensible operations. That's the part no prep course fully teaches and the part clients and employers notice.

If you're weighing a formal course versus self-study, the honest answer is that either can get you a passing score. Our own practice exams exist for exactly the people the Pocketables writer represents: motivated self-studiers who want to know they're ready before they pay for the test.

The Other Door: The COA Loophole

Here's where the second story complicates the first. FLYING Magazine, in a November 2025 report, laid out how some law enforcement and public agencies operate drones without a Part 107 certificate by flying under a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization — a COA — instead.

The short version: public agencies have long had the option to operate as public aircraft under a COA rather than under Part 107. FLYING framed this as a "loophole" because it can let an agency put drones in the air without the individual airman certification that a commercial operator would be required to hold. Two doors into the same airspace, with very different keys.

A widening training pipeline and a certificate-optional path for public agencies aren't contradictions. They're two answers to the same question: who is qualified to fly, and who gets to decide?

A few things are worth stating plainly, because the reporting is about a specific and often-misunderstood corner of the rules:

• The COA path described by FLYING applies to public aircraft operations, not to the average commercial operator. If you're flying for a private business, Part 107 is still your world.
• "No Part 107 required" does not mean "no rules." A COA comes with its own conditions, and public agencies remain accountable for safe operation.
• The concern FLYING raised is about consistency of training and oversight — whether pilots coming in through the COA door demonstrate the same baseline knowledge that the certificate is designed to verify.

For pilots working in or alongside public safety programs, this is the detail that matters most: your agency's legal authority to fly may not hinge on your certificate, but your competence still does. Many agencies choose to have Part 107-certificated pilots regardless, precisely because the standard is legible and defensible.

What Pilots Should Actually Do

These two trends pull in opposite directions on paper. In practice, they point to the same habit: treat the certificate as a floor, not a ceiling.

1. 1If you're studying, study the operating environment, not just the test. Airspace classes, sectional charts, and waiver logic are the parts you'll use on day one — and the parts a rushed cram session skips. That's the case for structured study whether it comes from a college course or a course library you work through on your own.
2. 2If you work in public safety, don't assume the COA settles the question. Know which authority your program flies under and why. If your agency uses a COA, understand its conditions cold — and consider maintaining Part 107 anyway.
3. 3Watch how the FAA treats these paths going forward. With package-delivery operations still governed through Part 135 authorizations, per the FAA's own materials, the agency is clearly comfortable running multiple regulatory tracks at once. Expect scrutiny of consistency, not consolidation into one rule.

The certificate is getting easier to find a class for and, in one narrow lane, easier to fly around entirely. Neither fact changes the thing that keeps you and the public safe: knowing the airspace you're operating in.