Do You Need a Night Drone Operations Permit?

If you typed night drone operations permit Canada into Google and expected a form to fill out, here is the honest answer: that permit does not exist. Since June 1, 2019, Part IX of the Canadian Aviation Regulations has allowed both basic and advanced drone operations at night. The only night-specific rule is that your aircraft must carry position lights bright enough for the pilot and any visual observer to see it, and those lights must be on. What you actually need to fly after dark for a paying client is the same set of approvals you need in daylight: a pilot certificate that matches the airspace, a registered drone, and, depending on the job, an airspace authorization or a Special Flight Operations Certificate. This guide sorts out which of those apply to you.

We answer the night drone operations permit Canada question in almost every consultation we run. Business owners arrive convinced they are missing a document. Most of the time they are missing a beacon or an airspace request, and the fix takes days rather than months. Our commercial drone services crews fly night thermal and security work across Ontario under exactly the rules described below.

Where the night drone operations permit Canada myth comes from

Two things feed the confusion. The first is American. Until April 2021, the FAA required a Part 107 night waiver for any commercial flight after civil twilight in the United States. Canadian managers read US forums, see the phrase night waiver, and assume Transport Canada runs the same program. It never did.

The second is our own history. Before June 2019, almost every commercial drone flight in Canada needed a Special Flight Operations Certificate, and night was one of the conditions Transport Canada reviewed inside that SFOC. Anyone who ran drones commercially in 2017 remembers writing a night section into the application. Part IX replaced that model. Night flying moved into the standard rules, and the SFOC became an exception tool for operations the standard rules cannot cover.

So the phrase night drone operations permit Canada describes something that stopped existing seven years ago. What replaced it is a short list of conditions, and most enterprise drones meet them out of the box.

What the night flying rules actually require

Night, in the regulations, starts at the end of evening civil twilight and ends at the start of morning civil twilight. In southern Ontario that is roughly 30 minutes after sunset in September and closer to 35 minutes in June. Sunset itself is not night. Plenty of operators get this wrong in both directions. Transport Canada publishes the full rule set on its drone safety pages, and the night section is one paragraph long.

Once it is legally night, four things change in practice even though only one line of the regulation changes:

• Position lights. The aircraft must be equipped with lights sufficient for the pilot and any visual observer to see it, and they must be turned on. Transport Canada does not publish a lumen figure or a range. The test is whether you can actually see the aircraft at the distance you are flying.
• Visual line of sight still applies. Night does not relax the VLOS requirement. If you cannot keep the aircraft in sight without an aid other than corrective lenses, you are flying beyond visual line of sight, and that is a different approval entirely.
• Site survey. The pre-flight survey rule does not change, but wires and crane booms disappear in the dark. We walk every night site in daylight or at dusk and mark obstacles on the flight plan before the crew arrives.
• Crew. A pilot watching a thermal feed on a controller is not watching the aircraft. For night inspection work we always run a visual observer whose only job is to keep eyes on the lights.

On the equipment side, DJI’s Mavic 3 Enterprise, Matrice 30 and Matrice 4 series ship with a top beacon you switch on from the controller. Consumer airframes are less predictable. On several DJI models the front arm LEDs switch off automatically when recording starts, which means the aircraft goes dark at the exact moment the job begins. A clip-on strobe solves this for under $60, but it adds weight, and it must not push the aircraft over 250 g if you are counting on the micro drone exemption.

The real night drone operations permit Canada requirement, then, is a set of lights and a crew plan, not a document. Everything else on the list below applies whether the sun is up or not.

Which approvals replace a night drone permit

Every night drone operations permit Canada request we receive turns out to be one of the following four items. Working out which one is the entire consulting job.

1. The right pilot certificate

Transport Canada issues two everyday certificates for drones between 250 g and 25 kg. A Basic pilot certificate covers uncontrolled airspace, flights more than 30 m horizontally from bystanders, and sites more than 3 nautical miles from a certified airport or 1 nautical mile from a heliport. An Advanced pilot certificate is needed the moment any one of those conditions fails. Advanced means a harder online exam plus an in-person flight review with a Transport Canada certified flight reviewer, and the drone itself must have a manufacturer safety declaration on file for the operation you plan. Most night commercial work in the Greater Toronto Area lands in controlled airspace or near people, so in practice at least one pilot on your team needs the Advanced certificate.

2. A registered drone

Every drone between 250 g and 25 kg must be registered with Transport Canada before its first flight. The fee is $5, it takes about ten minutes online, and the registration number must be marked on the aircraft. Inspectors check this first because it is the easiest thing to check.

3. Controlled airspace authorization

Pearson, Billy Bishop, Hamilton, Ottawa and every other controlled airport in the country sit inside airspace where you need an authorization before takeoff. NAV CANADA handles these requests through its NAV Drone app and website. You draw the flight area, set the altitude and the time window, and the system either grants the authorization automatically or flags it for further coordination. Night flights use the same process. The only difference is that you enter a night time window, and a request that needs coordination near a busy airport can take several business days. Requesting authorization on the afternoon of the job is the most common reason a night shoot gets cancelled.

4. A Special Flight Operations Certificate

An SFOC is the approval for anything Part IX does not already permit. Night on its own is not on that list. The triggers that are: flying above 400 ft above ground, operating at an advertised event such as a concert or festival, flying more than five drones at once from one control station, drone light shows, foreign operators, and BVLOS work outside the new lower-risk category. Transport Canada asks for a complete application at least 30 working days before the flight, and incomplete applications go back to the start of the queue. If someone tells you a routine night thermal inspection in uncontrolled airspace needs an SFOC, get a second opinion before you lose a month.

BVLOS at night is a different conversation

Amendments to Part IX that came into force on November 4, 2025 created a Level 1 Complex Operations pilot certificate and an RPAS Operator Certificate for companies. Together they allow routine beyond visual line of sight flights in uncontrolled airspace, at low altitude, away from populated areas, without an SFOC. That opened up linear inspection work such as rural power lines and pipelines. It did not make night BVLOS a checkbox. Once you cannot see the aircraft, lights stop being a mitigation for your own crew and start being a mitigation for other aircraft, and the risk case has to say so. If your night job is also a BVLOS job, plan on an operator certificate, a documented detect-and-avoid approach and, in many cases, an SFOC on top. This is the point where a two-hour drone aviation consulting session saves a client weeks of back and forth with Transport Canada.

Your night drone operations permit Canada checklist

Here is the list we run through with every client before a night job. If every line is covered, you are legal, and there is no other document to chase.

• Pilot holds a Basic or Advanced certificate that matches the airspace and the distance from people at the site.
• Drone is registered, and the registration number is on the airframe.
• Position lights or a beacon are fitted, tested at full working distance, and on for the whole flight.
• Site survey done in daylight, with obstacles and the emergency landing area marked.
• NAV Drone authorization obtained for the actual night time window if the site is in controlled airspace.
• Any SFOC trigger identified early: altitude above 400 ft, an advertised event, BVLOS, or more than five aircraft.
• Landowner permission and municipal bylaws checked, since many Ontario parks restrict takeoff after dark regardless of the federal rules.
• Liability insurance in place. Transport Canada does not require it, but almost every commercial client and property manager does, and $2 million to $5 million is the usual ask.
• Visual observer briefed, with a radio or phone link to the pilot and a clear rule for when to call an abort.

Night drone mistakes we see as flight reviewers

Our flight reviewers see the same night errors again and again when Advanced candidates come through.

Treating sunset as the line. A real estate crew flies twilight exteriors 40 minutes after sunset in October, believing it is still day. Civil twilight ended ten minutes earlier and the aircraft has no beacon. That is a violation with a fine attached, and the client’s footage is now the evidence.

Applying for an SFOC that is not needed. A property management firm asks for a night drone operations permit Canada wide for roof inspections across its portfolio, files an SFOC, and waits 30 working days for a reply that says the flights were already allowed under Part IX. Six weeks lost.

Relying on status LEDs. The green and red arm lights on a consumer drone are status indicators. On several models they turn off during recording. At 200 m on a dark night the aircraft becomes invisible to the observer, which is exactly the situation the rule exists to prevent.

Forgetting the observer. Thermal inspection at night means the pilot is looking at the screen. Without a dedicated observer nobody is maintaining visual line of sight, and the flight is BVLOS in everything but name, without the approvals for it.

Requesting NAV Drone authorization too late. Automatic approval works in many grid squares, but anywhere near Pearson the request often needs coordination. Ask at least five business days ahead for night work in controlled airspace.

What to do next

Put the night drone operations permit Canada search aside and answer four questions instead. Where is the site relative to controlled airspace? How close will the aircraft be to people who are not part of your crew? Will the pilot see the aircraft the whole time? Does anything about the job go above 400 ft, near an advertised event, or beyond five aircraft? The answers tell you whether you need Basic or Advanced pilots, whether NAV Drone is involved, and whether an SFOC is genuinely required.

If you would rather not work that out yourself, that is the service we sell. Mostavio-SkyTech trains the pilots, declares the aircraft, files the NAV Drone and SFOC requests, and flies the night job under our own operating procedures if you do not want to build a program in-house. Book a free consultation and bring the site address. We can usually tell you in one call whether a night drone operations permit Canada search has been sending you down the wrong road, and what the right one looks like.