LAANC Airspace Authorisation: What It Covers and What It Does Not

You are parked outside a Class D surface area with a job to do. The app shows a grid square over your site reading 200 feet. That is above the height you need, so you pull the props out and start briefing the client.

That grid number is not permission. It never was, and the FAA states so in capital letters on its own page.

The map tells you what the FAA is likely to approve quickly. Approval is a separate act, and until you have it you have nothing.

What LAANC is

LAANC — Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability — automates the application and approval of airspace authorisations. You apply through a private company the FAA has approved as a UAS Service Supplier, your request is checked against FAA airspace data including UAS Facility Maps, special use airspace, TFRs and NOTAMs, and if it passes you get your authorisation back in near-real time.

It covers access to controlled airspace at or below 400 feet. It is open both to Part 107 pilots and to recreational flyers operating under the exception, though as you will see below the two do not get the same options.

Per the FAA's LAANC page, the capability is available at 726 airports. If your site sits under controlled airspace attached to an airport that does not offer LAANC, the route is the manual authorisation process instead.

Two kinds of request, and only one is instant

	Near-real-time authorisation	Further coordination
What it is for	Operations under 400 ft in controlled airspace around airports	Flying above the ceiling shown on the UAS Facility Map, up to 400 ft
How it is decided	Automated against FAA airspace data	Coordinated manually through the FAA
Speed	Near-real time	Apply up to 90 days in advance
Who can use it	Part 107 pilots and recreational flyers	Part 107 pilots only
If refused	Adjust the request and resubmit	Facilities can give additional guidance so you can adjust and resubmit

The 90-day lead time on further coordination is the number worth writing down. If a client asks for a shot that needs 350 feet in a grid capped at 100, that is not a decision you make on the morning. It is a request you should have filed weeks earlier.

Reading the facility map properly

The FAA's own FAQ is precise about what the numbers mean: they "depict the maximum altitude that may be assigned by a FAA processor without additional internal FAA coordination." Not the maximum you may fly. The maximum that gets waved through without a human getting involved.

Three details from that FAQ change how you plan:

• The altitudes are AGL. The maximum altitude in an authorisation is the maximum height above the ground, not above sea level.
• The grids are 30 seconds of latitude by 30 seconds of longitude — in most of the lower 48 that is about a quarter of a square mile, roughly 160 acres. A large site can straddle two grids with different ceilings, and the lower one governs where you actually are.
• Above the map is not automatically refused. A request above the displayed altitude "may still be approved but would need coordination with the facility and additional FAA safety analysis." That is precisely what further coordination is.

And the maps move. Updates follow the 56-day aeronautical chart production schedule, and each published map carries an effective date. A screenshot from a previous job is not a current map.

Submitting at the mapped altitude also does not guarantee you anything. The FAA is explicit: "all airspace authorization requests are assessed to determine the impact on the safety of the National Airspace System."

Three things LAANC does not do

It is not a waiver. Authorisation gets you into controlled airspace. It does not lift any other Part 107 limitation — not the 400-foot ceiling, not visual line of sight, not the rules on flying over people. Those live in a different process entirely, and we cover which of them can even be waived in our guide to what the FAA will and will not waive.

It is not a preflight. The FAA's wording: "LAANC provides airspace authorizations only. Pilots must still check NOTAMs, weather conditions, and abide by all airspace restrictions." An approval in your inbox says nothing about the TFR that went up an hour ago.

It is not a conversation with the tower. This one surprises people, so here it is verbatim: "Unless specifically requested in an authorization, drone pilots do not need to notify the tower before they fly." Read your authorisation — if it asks you to call, call. Otherwise you are not expected to.

What you need before any of this works

To use LAANC under Part 107 you must hold a remote pilot certificate and have your aircraft registered. Recreational flyers need registration and TRUST. If you are still deciding which of those two regimes you are in, the dividing line is purpose rather than payment — we set it out in TRUST vs Part 107, and the registration difference matters too, because a recreational registration does not convert.

If you are not yet confident reading the airspace itself, start with the zones rather than the app — our guide to reading restriction zones covers why the boundaries sit where they do.

What we could not confirm

• We could not confirm from any FAA page what a 0-foot grid means. Neither the UAS Facility Maps page nor its FAQ mentions zero-foot grids at all. Plenty of third-party guides explain them confidently; none of that is the FAA speaking, and we are not going to launder it into a citation. Treat a 0 in your app as "LAANC will not approve this automatically" and take the question to the facility or the FAA's UAS Support Center.
• The 726-airport figure and the list of approved service suppliers come from the FAA's LAANC page, which carried a last-updated date of 5 December 2024. Both numbers move. Check before assuming your airport participates.
• The UAS Facility Maps page was last updated 12 April 2023 and its FAQ on 5 June 2025. The substance is stable but the routing instructions on older FAA pages are the part most likely to have drifted.
• We could not confirm whether the waiver-plus-authorisation combination case has been re-routed following the move of waiver applications to the Aviation Safety Hub. The LAANC page still says DroneZone for both.
• Typical approval and refusal rates for further coordination requests are not something we have verified data on.

The short version

The facility map is a forecast, not a clearance — the FAA says in capitals that it authorises nothing. LAANC turns that forecast into an actual authorisation in near-real time at 726 airports, for operations at or below 400 feet. If you need more altitude than the grid shows, that is a further coordination request, it is manual, it is Part 107 only, and you can file it up to 90 days ahead — so file it early rather than discovering the ceiling on site. The grids are about 160 acres each and refresh on the 56-day chart cycle, so check the current map for the exact spot you will stand in. And once you hold the authorisation, it covers airspace and nothing else: NOTAMs, weather and every other Part 107 limitation are still yours to manage.

Airspace questions make up a large share of the Part 107 knowledge test, and they are the ones people lose marks on. Start free with the Flycensed iOS app and its 485+ practice questions, or work through the airspace and chart chapters in the Part 107 Complete Study Guide ($14.99).