been flying my mavic for about a year and a half just as a hobby, mostly landscape stuff on hikes and occasionally some footage for friends. someone mentioned i should get my part 107 cert but i dont really plan on making money from it. is there actually any benefit to having it if you're not doing commercial work? i know there's some stuff about flying in controlled airspace but i thought laanc handles that anyway. maybe im missing something. the test also seems like a lot of work for something i might not need

honestly the main real benefit for a purely recreational flyer is the controlled airspace access without the recreational altitude caps. with 107 you can request waivers for things that LAANC doesn't cover and you get more flexibility in general. but yeah if you're just doing weekend hikes in uncontrolled airspace it's probably not worth the prep time unless you think you might eventually want to do anything commercial. that said the test isnt that bad once you get into it, the airspace and weather knowledge is actually pretty useful to just have.

i got mine even though i wasnt planning to go commercial and i dont regret it. partly because i ended up doing a few paid gigs through word of mouth that i never expected, like a friend asked me to shoot his property listing and i was glad i was already legal. also i just feel more confident knowing i actually understand the regs rather than guessing. but if you truly never want to make a dime from it and you stick to recreational airspace then yeah its probably not urgent.