What we check, and what you should
Terasor does not hold or verify pilots' documents. We are not a regulator, a training body or an insurer, so we cannot confer or confirm anyone's status, and a page telling you otherwise would be telling you a check had happened when it had not.
That is the honest position. It is also the more useful one, and here is why.
Why a check at signup would not tell you much
Credentials expire. In the United Kingdom an Operator ID lasts a year and a Flyer ID lasts five. Remote pilot competency in the UK and across the European Union is valid for five years and then has to be revalidated. In the United States the certificate itself does not lapse, but the privileges do: a remote pilot may not exercise them unless they have completed the knowledge test or recurrent training within the previous 24 calendar months.
Credentials are also specific. An operational authorisation is issued to an operator, and it sets out the scope of the operation, the conditions attached to it, and the locations where it applies. It describes a permitted operation rather than granting a general status. Whether it covers your job is a question about your job.
And they belong to different people. An A2 Certificate of Competency is held by the individual remote pilot. An operational authorisation is issued to the operator. If the operator is a company, the person who arrives may not be the person named on the authorisation.
So a platform that collected every document on the day a pilot joined would be telling you something true about that day, and very little about your flight.
The one thing you can check yourself, in about a minute
If you are booking in the United Kingdom, the Civil Aviation Authority publishes a service for confirming a registration. It is a confirmation tool rather than a search tool: you cannot type in a name and discover someone's registration. You need the ID and the name it is registered to, and the service tells you whether that pairing is valid.
That is the right shape for a buyer who has been handed a number. Ask for the operator ID and the name it is registered to, then check it yourself. It is the only step on this page that does not depend on trusting an answer.
We have not established whether equivalent public services exist elsewhere, so this page does not claim that they do or that they do not.
Four questions worth asking before you book
Who is the operator, and what is the operator registration number?
The answer tells you a registration exists, and in the UK that it is current, because it expires every year. It does not tell you who will fly or what any flight is permitted to be. A reasonable answer gives you a number and the name it is registered to. Both, because the check needs both.
Who turns up, and what do they hold?
The answer tells you that person has trained to a stated level, which in the UK and the EU is valid for five years. It does not tell you the operation is authorised, because competency belongs to a person and authorisation belongs to an operator. A reasonable answer names the individual.
If you are booking in the United States, when did they last complete recurrent training?
This is a different question from whether they hold a certificate, and it is the one worth asking, because the certificate can be in good standing while the privileges have lapsed. A reasonable answer is a date inside the last 24 calendar months.
Is there an authorisation covering this job, and what does it say about scope and location?
The answer tells you whether the permitted operation matches the one you are booking. It does not transfer to another operator and it does not stretch past the conditions written into it. A reasonable answer quotes the scope and the locations from the document and explains how your job sits inside them. An answer that offers only a reference number and an expiry date has answered a different question.
On insurance
A certificate shows you the insured party, the policy period and the limit of cover. It does not show you that the policy is in force on the day of your flight, or that your particular job falls within its terms. Two things are worth matching by eye: the insured name against the operator name on the registration, and the described activity against the work you are booking. Retained European regulation sets minimum levels of third party cover for aircraft operators, scaled by the weight of the aircraft.
What we do instead
We show you what each pilot has told us, labelled as what it is: their own declarations, not our findings. We hold the money in escrow until the work is delivered, so the payment is not a matter of trust. Ratings come from completed jobs rather than from sign-ups. Portfolios show work rather than describing it. And the pilot keeps ninety percent of the price, before payment processing fees, which is the offer we make to pilots.
None of that is verification, and we are not going to call it that.