real estate
Who Owns the Airspace Above My House? The 500-Foot Rule Is Not a Property Line
In brief
Who owns the airspace above my house?
Four parties hold overlapping claims on the same column of air. The federal government has exclusive sovereignty over it. The FAA regulates flight through it. Every citizen holds a public right of transit through the navigable part. And you own what the Supreme Court in 1946 called the "immediate reaches": as much of the space above the ground as you can occupy or use in connection with your land.
There is no 500-foot property line. That figure is a rule about where airplanes may fly, not a boundary marking where your land stops - and the Supreme Court has never said where it stops.
The doctrine that gave you the sky, and then took it back
For centuries the answer was a Latin maxim: cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos. Whoever owns the soil owns it up to the heavens and down to hell. It appears in Coke's Institutes, Blackstone's Commentaries and Kent's Commentaries - three texts the Supreme Court cited in a footnote as it demolished the rule.
The doctrine was never really about the heavens. It answered overhanging eaves and wires strung across a field, and it worked while the only things above a farm were birds and weather. Powered flight made it untenable within a generation. The Court said so in 1946: "But that doctrine has no place in the modern world. The air is a public highway, as Congress has declared. Were that not true, every transcontinental flight would subject the operator to countless trespass suits. Common sense revolts at the idea." law.cornell.edu
A chicken farm outside Greensboro
The case was United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256 (1946), and its facts are unusually concrete for a foundational property decision. The Causbys owned 2.8 acres near a municipal airport outside Greensboro, North Carolina, with a house and outbuildings used for raising chickens. In May 1942 the United States leased the airport. The approved glide path to one runway passed over their property at 83 feet - 67 feet above the house, 63 above the barn, 18 above the tallest tree. Bombers and fighters came over close enough at times to blow the old leaves off the treetops. The chickens flew into the walls from fright, about 150 in all, and the Causbys gave up the business. The Court of Claims held the United States had taken an easement as of 1 June 1942, worth $2,000 with the property destroyed.
The government argued the flights were inside the navigable airspace Congress had placed in the public domain, so nothing had been taken. Justice Douglas rejected both halves. The flights were below the prescribed minimum safe altitudes, so they were not navigable airspace at all. And even without ad coelum, a landowner keeps something.
Causby did not draw the line. It held that there is one, described it in functional terms, and left the surveying to somebody else.
The operative passage is short. "Yet it is obvious that if the landowner is to have full enjoyment of the land, he must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere. Otherwise buildings could not be erected, trees could not be planted, and even fences could not be run." Then the sentence that has governed American airspace ownership for eighty years: "The landowner owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land."
The test is functional, not numerical: it turns on what you can do with the space, which differs between a wheat field and a Manhattan block. And the Court declined to fix the boundary: "The airspace, apart from the immediate reaches above the land, is part of the public domain. We need not determine at this time what those precise limits are." It never has. Sixteen years later, Griggs v. Allegheny County, 369 U.S. 84 (1962), settled who pays for such an easement: the airport's owner and operator, not the federal government or the airlines. law.cornell.edu
Four claims on one column of air
Nobody owns your airspace outright. Four kinds of claim run through the same vertical space, and they coexist because they are not the same kind of thing.
| Claimant | What it holds | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The United States | Exclusive sovereignty of the airspace. Jurisdiction, not title. | 49 U.S.C. 40103(a)(1) |
| The FAA | Power to plan use of navigable airspace and set air traffic rules, including safe altitudes. | 49 U.S.C. 40103(b) |
| Every citizen | A public right of transit through navigable airspace: an easement over everyone's land at once. | 49 U.S.C. 40103(a)(2) |
| You | The immediate reaches: the space you can occupy or use in connection with the land. | United States v. Causby |
Statutory text as codified. law.cornell.edu
Figure
The column of air above a house, from the ground up
1 · The surface
The land itself
Yours, subject to easements, covenants and zoning. Entry is trespass. No aviation law involved.
2 · The immediate reaches
Yours, height undefined
Roof, chimney, trees, fence, crane. Causby put invasions here in the same category as invasions of the surface. No stated altitude: a farmhouse does not reach as far as a tower block.
3 · The contested band
Nobody has mapped it
Above what you plainly use, below where crewed aircraft may lawfully fly. Historically empty, therefore ignored. Now where almost every drone operates.
4 · Navigable airspace
Public domain
Airspace above the prescribed minimum altitudes of flight, plus what is needed for safe takeoff and landing. Flight here is not a trespass.
Over all four
Federal sovereignty
From band 1 to the top of the atmosphere. Sovereignty is jurisdiction, not title. It does not make the government your landlord.
No altitude figure separates band 2 from band 4. That is not a simplification for this article. It is the law, and the reason band 3 exists.
Where the 500-foot figure actually comes from
Almost every page answering this question asserts that you own the air up to 500 feet, and several contradict themselves within a few paragraphs. The number is real; it is not a property boundary. It comes from 14 C.F.R. 91.119, the minimum safe altitude rule, which tells pilots how low they may fly and says nothing about who owns what. law.cornell.edu
| Where | Minimum altitude for a crewed aircraft |
|---|---|
| Anywhere | High enough that, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing can be made without undue hazard below. |
| Congested areas | 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet. Not above ground. |
| Other than congested | 500 feet above the surface. |
| Open water, sparsely populated | No floor. Instead, no closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle or structure - a standoff, not a ceiling. |
| Helicopters | May go below both minimums if flown without hazard to persons or property below. |
| All of the above | Suspended when necessary for takeoff or landing. The exception that made the Causbys' case. |
Read the third and fourth rows together and the folklore collapses. If 500 feet marked the top of private ownership, the rule would not vanish over open water and reappear as a horizontal distance from a boat. It is a safety standard calibrated to what an aircraft can do when an engine quits, and no statute or decision gives a landowner a numeric altitude at all. A flight above 500 feet can still be a taking if it is low, frequent and direct enough to interfere with use of the land - that was the whole of Causby, which records the 1946 figures: 500 feet by day and 1,000 at night for air carriers, 300 to 1,000 for other aircraft. The number moved. Property lines do not.
Drones broke the settlement
The Causby arrangement held for seventy years because the band in the middle was empty. Nothing routinely flew at 150 feet over a suburban backyard, so nobody had to decide who controlled it. Drones filled it almost overnight.
A drone is an aircraft: the statutory definition covers "any contrivance invented, used, or designed to navigate, or fly in, the air". Commercial operators fly under 14 C.F.R. Part 107, which caps altitude at 400 feet above ground level unless the drone stays within a 400-foot radius of a structure and no higher than 400 feet above its uppermost limit. law.cornell.edu Recreational flyers use a separate exception, 49 U.S.C. 44809, permitting flight in Class G airspace from the surface to not more than 400 feet above ground level. law.cornell.edu
Those rules put nearly all lawful drone flight into the band Causby never mapped. The FAA's position is that its authority runs from the ground up. Many state and local governments disagree, and no court has resolved it.
Congress defined navigable airspace from the top down. Drones arrived from the bottom up. The gap between them is where the argument now lives.
Three data points show how unsettled this is. In Boggs v. Merideth, a Kentucky landowner shot down a drone flying about 200 feet above his property; the pilot sued for a declaration that he had been in navigable airspace under exclusive federal jurisdiction. On 21 March 2017 the Western District of Kentucky dismissed for want of federal jurisdiction, treating it as an ordinary state tort case and leaving the question untouched. gibsondunn.com
In Singer v. City of Newton, also 2017, a federal court in Massachusetts struck down parts of a municipal drone ordinance on conflict preemption grounds, including a rule barring flight below 400 feet over private property without the owner's permission. It declined the broader field preemption argument, holding only that these provisions together amounted to a de facto ban. harvardlawreview.org
Third, the FAA's Office of the Chief Counsel has published a fact sheet dividing the territory. Restrictions on flight altitude and flight paths attract strict judicial scrutiny. But laws "traditionally related to state and local police power - including land use, zoning, privacy, trespass, and law enforcement operations - generally are not subject to federal regulation." faa.gov
That is the seam. Altitude is federal; trespass is state. A drone hovering at 100 feet over a garden is arguably in both at once, and nothing says which wins. Oregon has legislated into the gap, giving an owner a cause of action against an operator who overflies the property - but only where he has done so before and been told not to, and not against a drone flown commercially under FAA authorization. oregon.public.law In August 2025 the FAA and TSA proposed a new Part 108 for routine flight beyond the operator's line of sight. It remains a proposal. federalregister.gov
This is legal information, not legal advice. Outcomes turn on state law, local ordinance and the facts, and self-help against an aircraft carries its own federal exposure. A drone that is a real problem is a question for a lawyer in your state.
Where airspace is bought and sold outright
One corner of this is settled, and it is where the money is. In dense cities the unbuilt space above a lot is a marketable interest. Under New York's Zoning Resolution, unused development rights - floor area a lot may build but has not - can move to a neighboring site through a zoning lot merger, or, for landmarks, transfer more widely under Section 74-79. zr.planning.nyc.gov The Supreme Court treated that landmark transfer scheme as part of the constitutional calculus in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978). law.cornell.edu
What is sold is not a slice of sky but a zoning entitlement - permission to build to a certain bulk - expressed vertically. The air above Grand Central carries the same sovereignty and right of transit as the air above a farm in Nebraska.
Frequently asked questions
Do I own the airspace 500 feet above my house?
No. Five hundred feet is a minimum safe altitude for crewed aircraft over non-congested areas, not a property boundary. What you own is the immediate reaches: the space you can occupy or use in connection with the land.
Is a plane flying over my house trespassing?
Not if it is in navigable airspace, where every citizen has a right of transit. But Causby holds that flights low and frequent enough to be a direct and immediate interference with use of the land can be a taking, and Griggs put liability on the airport's owner and operator.
Can a drone legally fly over my backyard?
Under federal aviation rules, generally yes, within the limits of Part 107 or 49 U.S.C. 44809. Whether it also gives rise to a state trespass, nuisance or privacy claim is a separate question, answered differently in different states and unresolved constitutionally.
Does the federal government own the air above my property?
It holds exclusive sovereignty, which is jurisdiction rather than title. That lets the United States decide who may fly and how. It did not stop the Causbys being paid.
Why do sources give different altitudes?
They quote different rules as one rule. 500 feet is the crewed-aircraft minimum over non-congested areas. 1,000 feet applies over congested areas, measured above the highest obstacle within a 2,000-foot radius. 400 feet is the drone ceiling. None is a property line.
Can I sell the air rights over my house?
In some jurisdictions, narrowly. What transfers is unused development capacity under local zoning, not a segment of the atmosphere. In a low-density suburb with no spare floor area and no receiving site, there is nothing to sell.
Key takeaways
The bottom line
- The rule that a landowner owned the sky to the heavens was abolished in United States v. Causby (1946): it "has no place in the modern world".
- You still own the immediate reaches - the space you can occupy or use in connection with the land. The Court declined to attach a number.
- The 500-foot figure is 14 C.F.R. 91.119, a minimum safe altitude for aircraft. It varies by terrain, vanishes over open water and is suspended for takeoff and landing.
- Four claims run through the same column of air: federal sovereignty, FAA authority, a public right of transit, and the landowner's immediate reaches.
- Drones fly in the band nobody mapped. Federal rules cap them at 400 feet, state trespass law reaches the same space, and no court has drawn the boundary.
Final word
American law decided in 1946 that this question needed a smaller answer than the one it had given for centuries, then never finished writing it. The sky became a public highway, but the Court reserved the question of where the highway starts. For eighty years that reservation cost nothing, because the space in between was empty. It is not empty now.