The promise of routine beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations has been a policy priority for several years, but as of May 20, 2025 the long‑awaited Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for BVLOS had not yet appeared in the Federal Register. The delay is not a single technical failure. It is the result of overlapping timelines, interagency review, statutory deadlines that were missed, and the practical need to reconcile aviation safety, national security, and a wide set of industry use cases before a draft rule can be published for public comment.
Start with the statutory timeline. Section 930 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 required the FAA to issue an NPRM establishing a performance‑based pathway for BVLOS within four months of enactment. That statutory clock landed expectations in late 2024, and when the agency did not publish by that date, Congress and industry pushed for an explanation and for faster movement. The missed deadline turned a routine rulemaking step into a political and programmatic issue.
The second axis of delay is regulatory process: executive branch interagency review. Major rules that have broad economic, safety, or security implications are routed through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB for interagency coordination. The BVLOS draft had entered and exited OIRA review during 2024 but was not cleared before a change in Administration. After the presidential transition, the draft was resubmitted for executive level review and, according to public committee material and industry statements, staff moved the package through additional coordination steps in early 2025. In mid May the package was again in the White House review pipeline. That handoff and recoordination are the proximate reason the NPRM had not reached the Federal Register by May 20.
A third contributor is the substantive complexity of what the FAA and other agencies are being asked to do. The BVLOS proposal is not a narrow procedural change. Lawmakers and stakeholders expect a performance‑based rule that covers airworthiness, operations, separation from manned aircraft, traffic management services, and security safeguards for commercial use cases like package delivery and critical infrastructure inspection. Those topics implicate the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security, TSA and other agencies that must weigh in during interagency review. Reconciling different risk appetites and statutory responsibilities takes time, particularly where rule text touches security screening, operator vetting, and provisions that could affect other parts of the national airspace system.
Fourth, the transition between administrations made coordination more intensive. A draft that proceeded under one administration must be reviewed by political appointees in the next, and in practice that can mean returning the draft to the originating agency for adjustments, new policy clearances, or fresh internal coordination before it returns to OIRA. Stakeholder groups have documented that the draft rule was in the interagency last year and then moved back into review under the new leadership early in 2025, which inserted additional review cycles.
Industry dynamics also matter. The FAA has been issuing case‑by‑case waivers and exemptions for BVLOS activity to learn from operational experience, which helps inform a national rule but also raises expectations that the rule should reflect real world practices. That learning reduces some technical uncertainty but also surfaces tradeoffs that the draft rule must address explicitly. At the same time, industry groups and Congress have pressured for speed and predictable timelines, increasing political attention and scrutiny. Those competing pressures—get a usable rule out quickly versus get a comprehensive and interagency‑sanctioned rule out—create tension for the agency.
What did this mean for the May 2025 status? By mid May the draft rule had been routed back to the White House review process and industry groups reported that the package was with OIRA. That status is consistent with a document that is being prepared for publication but still undergoing final executive branch coordination. The practical consequence is that publication timing depends on the remaining interagency issues, any requested edits, and scheduling at OMB for final clearance. The expectation publicly stated by some stakeholders at that time was for publication later in the spring or in summer 2025, contingent on the completion of those steps.
What should industry, advocates, and policymakers expect next? First, agencies will seek to resolve interagency concerns; this is the step that determines whether the NPRM is published as a single, broad package or split into narrower rulemakings. Second, once published, the NPRM will open a formal comment period and the clock will start on adjudicating those comments and returning to interagency review for a final rule. Third, stakeholders should use the intervening time to prepare evidence‑based comments, operational data from waiver programs, and clear arguments on practicable standards for performance‑based rules and UAS traffic management integration. Finally, policymakers should recognize that compressing these technical and interagency steps risks producing a rule that is legally or operationally fragile; measured speed with clear accountability is preferable to a rushed product that invites litigation or operational confusion.
In short, the NPRM was still pending in May 2025 because an already complicated, crosscutting rulemaking ran into a change in administration and had to re‑run the executive branch review and interagency coordination process. That process is the legitimate safety valve for rules that touch aviation safety and national security, but it also means stakeholders must continue to rely on waivers and careful advocacy while the regulatory path to routine BVLOS is finalized. The policy tradeoffs remain hard, and getting them right is the point of the review that had delayed publication through mid May 2025.