ok so this is kind of stressing me out. i was flying behind my house doing some fpv stuff and i drifted over my neighbors property line a bit, probably like 50 feet over their backyard. they came out and started yelling and said they were going to report me. i do have my part 107 cert so im not just some kind of random guy but idk if that even matters here. is there actually a law against flying over someones private property or is it more of a gray area. i tried googling it and got like 500 different answers, some say the FAA owns all airspace some say property owners own up to a certain height. my neighbor is the type who would actually make calls so im a bit worried

the honest answer is its genuinely unsettled law. the FAA does claim jurisdiction over navigable airspace which technically starts at the surface in some definitions, but there have been court cases going both ways on whether low altitude flights over private property constitute a trespass. the famous one people cite is Causby from like 1946 but that involved military aircraft and doesnt directly answer modern drone questions. some states have passed their own drone privacy laws, florida and texas have some specific statutes worth looking up if youre in those states. realistically though if your neighbor calls the FAA they're not going to show up over one accidental overflight. local police might respond depending on your area but without a specific ordinance theres not much they can do. id just go knock on their door and apologize honestly, takes the wind out of it

part 107 doesnt really protect you from a trespass or privacy claim thats a totally different legal domain than the FAA stuff. those are two seperate things running in parallel basically. not saying youre definitely in trouble just that having the cert doesnt automatically mean youre in the clear for everything