How a Drone Shoot Gets Approved in San Diego

Downtown San Diego sits under Lindbergh Field. The bayfront sits beside North Island. A good share of the county’s office, industrial and retail is inside controlled airspace of one kind or another, and a drone does not go up in it without an FAA authorization.

The mechanics are simpler than they sound. The FAA publishes a facility map that divides controlled airspace into grid squares, each with a ceiling in feet. Where the ceiling is 400 feet, an authorization to fly up to it comes back near-instantly through LAANC, the FAA’s automated system, filed through an approved app. Where the grid says 100 or 200 feet, the same thing happens, lower. Where the grid says zero, which it does over some blocks near the runways, there is no instant answer. The request goes in as a further-coordination case and the FAA typically takes about seventy-two hours to decide it.

Then there are the restrictions the grid cannot see. A temporary flight restriction can appear over a site for a visit or an incident. Petco Park and Snapdragon Stadium carry a standing restriction three nautical miles around them from an hour before a major-league or Division I game to an hour after, so a downtown flight on a game evening is not a flight.

We check all of this at booking, not on the morning. The Shoot Planner takes the address, reads the airspace class and the grid ceiling at that point, looks for restrictions and game days, and shows the light on each face for the date. Then the authorization is filed as part of the booking. For 1 and 2 Columbia Place the requests went in before either date, at the ceiling the grid allows over those blocks, and both evenings went ahead as planned.

What the broker gets from this is a date that holds. The airspace is the one thing about a drone shoot that cannot be fixed on site.

Who else can see the drone once it is up, and who can act on it, is its own story: Who Can See a Drone Over San Diego Now.

Book a shoot at https://plan.sudenim.com/ or email hey@sudenim.com.