The IMSAFE and PAVE Checklists: The FAA's Two Preflight Risk Tools

IMSAFE is the FAA's personal fitness checklist, run before every flight: Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Emotion. PAVE is the risk checklist for the flight itself: Pilot, Aircraft, enVironment, External pressures. IMSAFE asks whether you are fit to fly. PAVE asks whether the flight is fit to be flown.

Almost every page explaining these checklists writes them for a student pilot in a Cessna. That is a problem if you are studying for the Part 107 knowledge test, because the FAA words both checklists differently in the advisory circular written for remote pilots than it does in the handbooks written for everyone else. One of those differences is a live exam trap.

What does IMSAFE stand for?

Six items, one letter each. The wording below is from the FAA's Remote Pilot – Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Guide, Chapter 10.

Now the trap. Advisory Circular 107-2A, the advisory circular written specifically for small UAS operations, gives the same six letters but ends with Eating: "Am I sufficiently nourished?" Its alcohol item is also worded differently, asking whether you have consumed alcohol "within the last 8 to 24 hours."

Both documents are current FAA publications. Neither is wrong. If a knowledge test question offers you only one of Emotion or Eating, take the one on offer, because the other will not be there. If a question somehow offers both, Emotion is the answer given in the study guide the FAA points test candidates toward.

Why does the FAA care whether a remote pilot is fit?

Because the rule says so, and the rule is broader than most people assume.

14 CFR 107.17 states that no person may manipulate the flight controls of a small UAS, or act as remote pilot in command, visual observer, or direct participant in the operation, if they know or have reason to know they have a physical or mental condition that would interfere with safe operation.

Read that list again. The regulation does not stop at the person holding the controller. Your visual observer is covered. So is anyone else directly participating in the operation. If you are running a two-person crew and your VO came to the job on three hours of sleep, that is a regulatory problem, not just a judgment call. IMSAFE is the tool for asking the question, and you are expected to ask it of the crew, not only of yourself.

There is a second reason this matters more under Part 107 than under Part 61. A remote pilot does not hold an FAA medical certificate. There is no aviation medical examiner in the loop, no third class medical, no periodic examination. Under 14 CFR 107.61(c), eligibility for the certificate requires only that you not know or have reason to know of a disqualifying condition. Self-certification is the entire medical system. IMSAFE is how you perform it.

Alcohol and drugs: the numbers that are actually regulatory

14 CFR 107.27 does not write its own alcohol rule. It points at 14 CFR 91.17 and 91.19, the same sections that bind an airline captain. That means the figures are hard numbers, not guidance:

• 8 hours after consuming any alcoholic beverage before you may act or attempt to act as a crewmember
• 0.04 blood or breath alcohol concentration, at or above which you may not act
• No acting while under the influence of alcohol, regardless of the clock or the number
• No using any drug that affects your faculties in any way contrary to safety
• Under 91.19, no operating an aircraft knowing that narcotics or controlled substances are carried aboard

Two things about 0.04 deserve emphasis. It is half the 0.08 limit most states use for driving, so a remote pilot legally safe to drive home can be well over the aviation limit. And the 8 hours and the 0.04 are independent tests: if you drank heavily and stopped nine hours ago, the clock is satisfied and you may still be above 0.04.

The IMSAFE alcohol item asking about 24 hours is not a regulation. It is the FAA's guidance that impairment outlasts the legal minimum. Treat 8 hours as the floor you cannot go below and 24 hours as the standard you should actually fly to.

What does PAVE stand for?

Where IMSAFE assesses the pilot, PAVE sorts the risks of the flight into four buckets before you launch. The study guide gives them as Pilot-in-command, Aircraft, enVironment, External pressures. AC 107-2A calls the first bucket Personal rather than Pilot, but asks the same question.

AC 107-2A's external pressures questions are unusually blunt for a regulatory document. It asks whether there is pressure to complete the operation quickly, whether you are dealing with an unhealthy safety culture, and whether you are "being honest with myself and others about my personal operational abilities and limitations."

That last one is the whole point of the bucket. External pressure rarely announces itself. It arrives as a client standing next to you at 4 p.m. with the light going, asking how much longer.

Notice that PAVE's Aircraft and enVironment buckets map almost exactly onto 14 CFR 107.49, which requires the remote PIC to assess the operating environment before flight, including local weather, local airspace and flight restrictions, the location of persons and property on the surface, and other ground hazards. PAVE is not an alternative to the regulatory preflight. It is a way of remembering it. Our remote PIC preflight checklist works through 107.49 duty by duty.

What are the 5 P's in aviation?

The 5 P's are a separate model from the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, Chapter 2: the Plan, the Plane, the Pilot, the Passengers, and the Programming. The idea is that these five variables are what a pilot can actually change, and that they should be re-checked at fixed decision points rather than once before departure.

Four translate cleanly to drone work. The Plan is the mission and the schedule. The Plane is the aircraft. The Pilot is you, assessed with IMSAFE. The Programming is your autopilot settings, waypoint mission, geofence and firmware, which for a modern drone is a larger risk category than it is for a light aircraft.

Passengers has no direct equivalent, and the temptation is to skip it. Do not. On a commercial job it becomes the people whose behavior you cannot control but who affect the flight: the visual observer, the client walking into the shot, the crowd that gathers because a drone went up.

The models that run once the flight is underway

IMSAFE, PAVE and the 5 P's all run before you launch. Two more run after.

DECIDE is the in-flight loop, and the acronym is its own definition. The FAA gives it as Detect, Estimate, Choose a course of action, Identify solutions, Do the necessary actions, and Evaluate the effects of the actions. AC 107-2A names the model directly and tells remote pilots to use it to continually evaluate each operation for hazards.

3P compresses the same idea into Perceive, Process, Perform, and each step has its own checklist. You perceive hazards with PAVE. You process them with CARE: Consequences, Alternatives, Reality, External factors. You perform risk management with TEAM: Transfer, Eliminate, Accept, or Mitigate.

TEAM is the one worth memorizing beyond the exam, because it names the only four things you can ever do about a risk. You can hand it to someone else, remove it, knowingly accept it, or reduce it. There is no fifth option, and "hope it does not happen" is not one of the four.

What this means on a working day

Here is the honest version of how these tools get used, as opposed to how they get taught.

Run IMSAFE in the morning, before you load the truck, because that is the last moment canceling is cheap. Run it at the site instead and you have already burned a two-hour drive, which means external pressure is now weighing on an assessment that is supposed to be independent of it.

PAVE is a site tool. Run it once when you arrive and again if anything material changes: the wind gets up, the cloud base drops, the client adds a shot over the parking lot.

The item skipped most often is Fatigue, because fatigue is the one condition that impairs your ability to detect it. The FAA calls it one of the most insidious hazards to flight safety precisely because it may not be apparent until serious errors are made. Set your personal minimums on a calm Tuesday, when no client is standing next to you. That decision is worth more than the same one made on site.

How the exam asks about IMSAFE and PAVE

Aeronautical decision-making sits in the Operations area, which is 25 percent of the Unmanned Aircraft General knowledge test under the blueprint effective 29 September 2025. Question shapes are predictable:

• Straight recall of a letter. "What does the M in IMSAFE stand for?" Medication.
• A scenario mapped to a bucket. A client pressuring you to finish before dark is External pressures, not Pilot. A remote pilot who slept badly is Pilot.
• The alcohol numbers. 8 hours and 0.04. These come from 91.17 through 107.27, and the distractors are usually 12 hours or 0.08.
• Which model applies when. IMSAFE and PAVE are preflight. DECIDE and 3P are in-flight.
• Hazardous attitude crossovers. External pressure often shows up as an antidote question. Our guide to the five hazardous attitudes covers the antidotes you have to memorize word for word.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I use the IMSAFE checklist?

Before every flight, and again if anything about your condition changes during a long working day. The FAA presents IMSAFE as a preflight self-assessment rather than a daily one, so a remote pilot flying four jobs across twelve hours should be running it four times. Fatigue and stress both accumulate over a day in ways illness does not.

What are the 5 P's in aviation?

The Plan, the Plane, the Pilot, the Passengers, and the Programming, from Chapter 2 of the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. They represent the variables a pilot can actually control, and the model asks you to re-evaluate all five at fixed decision points during a flight rather than only once before it starts.

What medical conditions disqualify you from flying a drone?

The FAA publishes no list for Part 107, because remote pilots hold no medical certificate. Under 14 CFR 107.17 and 107.61(c), the standard is any physical or mental condition that would interfere with safe operation, and you self-certify against it. That makes the judgment yours, and the responsibility yours.

Does a Part 107 remote pilot need a medical certificate?

No. Part 107 requires no FAA medical certificate of any class. You must be at least 16, able to read, speak, write and understand English, pass the knowledge test, and not know or have reason to know of a disqualifying physical or mental condition. Self-certification with IMSAFE replaces the medical examination entirely.

What is the difference between IMSAFE and PAVE?

IMSAFE assesses one thing: whether you personally are fit to fly right now. PAVE assesses the whole operation and sorts its risks into four buckets, one of which is you. IMSAFE is effectively PAVE's first bucket expanded into six questions, which is why the FAA presents them together rather than as alternatives.

Is the IMSAFE E for Emotion or Eating?

Both, depending on the document. The Remote Pilot Study Guide and the Pilot's Handbook give Emotion, asking whether you are emotionally upset. AC 107-2A gives Eating, asking whether you are sufficiently nourished. All three are current FAA publications, so answer with whichever option the question puts in front of you.

Want to know whether decision-making questions like these would cost you the pass? Take the free Part 107 readiness assessment and find out where you actually stand.

Sources

• 14 CFR 107.17 — Medical condition
• 14 CFR 107.27 — Alcohol or drugs
• 14 CFR 107.49 — Preflight familiarization, inspection, and actions for aircraft operation
• 14 CFR 107.61 — Eligibility
• 14 CFR 91.17 — Alcohol or drugs
• AC 107-2A, Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS)
• Remote Pilot – Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Guide
• Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, Chapter 2: Aeronautical Decision-Making
• AC 60-22, Aeronautical Decision Making