Drone users in the UK must now sit an online test and pay a £9 annual fee, or face a £1,000 fine, after the launch of a mandatory national registration scheme this week.
Owners are obliged to identify and label all drones by 30 November, and operators must pass a test about legal and safe usage before they can fly them.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) estimates that about 130,000 people will have to pay and register by the end of the month.
All drones weighing more than 250g, which is most drones except the smallest toys, must be registered and labelled with a unique licence number. This means they will have to be grounded to identify their owners, but in the future, this could be done remotely or while drones are in the air. Some models already have transmitters that would enable that.
The Register was announced by the government in 2017 in response to growing concern over drone use, from smuggling drugs into prisons, to the potential for collisions with planes around airports. Plans for a database of owners predated the incident at Gatwick airport last December, when a drone was repeatedly flown near the runway, causing a number of flights to be cancelled and around 1000 flights affected in total. Further legislation has since been tabled to enhance police powers, including possible on-the-spot fines.
Pilots have welcomed the launch of the Register. The British Airline Pilots Association's head of flight safety, Rob Hunter, said: "this is another measure to encourage responsible drone operation, which is desperately needed to ensure a collision between an aircraft and a drone is avoided".
The CAA is launching an accompanying "drones reunited" site, which will allow the CAA to return wayward drones, which can occur from loss of power, poor signal, technical failure or operator error.
A CAA spokesman said the site would give "something back to the community, helping responsible drone owners and operators to be reunited with lost drones and continue flying".
