What happens when a certified pilot breaks the rules so plainly that the aviation authority itself catches it? Belgium's civil aviation authority has published its 2025 enforcement data, and it draws a sharp line between holding a certificate and actually complying with it: unauthorized drone light shows, a drone detected at 500 m — more than four times the open category's 120 m ceiling — and several cases of operators flying without the required authorization.
Why this report matters beyond Belgium
Belgium isn't a random data point. It's a country with mature airspace-management infrastructure — a working geographical-zone system, registration requirements, and functioning oversight. If violations at this scale get caught even there, the takeaway isn't "Belgium has a problem." The takeaway is that since the legacy transition period ended, the EU's open-category framework (Regulation (EU) 2019/947) is fully in force everywhere, and national aviation authorities across the EU are ramping up enforcement. Latvia's CAA operates under the same framework, so Belgium's data applies directly to a Latvian pilot's pre-flight habits — it isn't a story to read as "somewhere else."
Three violation types — and a distinct cause behind each
The Belgian data doesn't describe "people breaking the rules" as one blob. It describes three distinct violation types, each with its own root cause:
| Violation type | Likely root cause | Pre-flight check |
|---|---|---|
| Unauthorized drone light shows | Organizer treats the event as an entertainment production, not an aviation activity requiring authorization | Does the show have category-appropriate authorization (usually specific category) from the aviation authority — not just the event organizer's sign-off? |
Drone at 500 m (4x the 120 m ceiling) | Altitude went unmonitored during flight, or was deliberately ignored | Is altitude actively tracked in flight, rather than assuming "the drone won't exceed it on its own"? |
| Flights without required authorization | Pilot never checked whether the zone or the activity needed coordination | Was both the zone and the activity type checked before takeoff — not just one of the two? |
Each of these is checkable before takeoff, not after the fact. That's exactly what makes enforcement data useful: it isn't an abstract warning, it's a concrete list to check your own routine against.
120 m is not a suggestion — it's a ceiling
Regulation (EU) 2019/947, Annex Part A, UAS.OPEN.010, requires that a UAS operated in the open category be kept no higher than 120 m from the nearest point of the surface of the earth or water, with narrow exceptions near artificial obstacles. The 500 m case detected in Belgium isn't a borderline call or a matter of interpretation — it's a direct breach of that rule, regardless of whether the pilot held an A1/A3 certificate. A certificate proves knowledge of the rule. It doesn't exempt anyone from following it in flight.
The same logic applies to authorizations: certain operations — flights over gatherings of people, light shows, flights inside designated geographical zones — require prior coordination regardless of the pilot's category. For how to check whether a specific location or activity in Latvia needs coordination, see our piece on no-fly zones in Latvia, and for the practical side of the 120 m ceiling itself, see Latvia's maximum drone altitude.
What happens once a violation is caught
The Belgian data doesn't say what specific penalties applied to each case, and this article won't guess at that either. What's known and verifiable in the Latvian context is the enforcement and reporting process itself: what fines and turnover risk Latvian businesses face for violations is covered in our article on drone fines and turnover in 2026, and what to do and report after an incident is covered in 72-hour incident reporting.
What matters right now
Belgium's report isn't news about one country — it's confirmation that enforcement is real everywhere the EU framework is in full force, and that the most common mistake isn't not knowing the rules but not checking them on this specific flight. Before your next takeoff: altitude, zone, authorization — three checks, not fewer.
Not sure whether a specific activity needs a license? See our guide, Do I need a drone licence in Latvia.
