Where Can I Fly My Drone? Here's How to Find Out

Drones are faithful companions of travel and exploration, but they are neither cameras nor cell phones. Before stopping and deciding to take off your aircraft, it is prudent to ask yourself if and how, where you are, the flight of drones is legal.

Drones, or more technically UAS, unmanned aircraft, are in fact subject to a series of constraints, which mostly apply to the entire territory of the EU and which apply in a similar way to many other non-European countries.
There are essentially two types of places where drones are prohibited:

• General locations where conditions exist that make drone overflights dangerous or unlawful.
• Places considered inviolable or severely restricted because they are considered sensitive areas, such as airports or military areas.

However, flight restrictions are not always exclusively related to safety concerns. These limits also serve to protect people's privacy or to safeguard image rights, for example when flying over a stadium where sports competitions are held whose rights belong to public or private television broadcasters.

The EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency), the European agency for flight safety, has established that these rules must always be respected and that drones cannot be flown:

• Above 120 meters
• Less than 50 meters from people and property
• Less than 150 meters from crowds and built-up areas
• Close to airports
• Near other drones
• In protected areas
• In areas with unusual concentrations of people
• In the context of gatherings of people, processions, sporting events

As we mentioned, these are places and rules related to the safety and protection of the people involved. Common sense and prudence, therefore, are already an excellent radar to understand whether or not we can fly our drone.
However, it is not always obvious that you are violating one of these rules and, furthermore, you do not always realise that you are in a “no fly” zone.

For this reason, in our article we will suggest:

• Available sources for knowing rules and geographical restrictions
• How to interpret sources and who to contact to overcome flight bans
• The tools supplied with DJI drones to respect flight boundaries
• What to do when the drone loses contact with the pilot and flies autonomously

In the meantime, here are some simple operations to do before deciding to take off:

Select the weight class of your drone and plan your flight:

• Decide what the purpose of the flight is: professional or amateur aerial filming, exploration, play…
  • Plot a probable flight path
  • Determine the area you will be flying in and check if there are any specific restrictions for drone entry.

Even if you handle a small drone weighing less than 250 grams, in short, you begin to take on the role of pilot, responsible for the safety of the vehicle, people and things that come into contact with it during the flight.

Can I fly here? Here are the sources to question

On the website of the EASA you will surely find the most up-to-date information on restricted airspace. Alternatively, you can use the D-Flight web app of D-Flight , which is the company delegated by ENAC to provide navigation services for future users of U-Space, i.e. the drone airspace. The app allows you to check, from time to time, whether a specific location is subject to restrictions.

Also check the websites of the national aviation authorities ( NAA ) and get the necessary information for the country where you intend to fly your drone. EASA provides an alphabetical list that includes all 27 EU member states, as well as Switzerland and Iceland. The Italian link will land you (it is appropriate to say) on D-Flight page dedicated to maps and advice on how to consult them.

Some national aviation authorities offer digital charts that you can check online. In other cases, you may come across a link to updated document charts that you can download.

If you are in the UK, we recommend reading the website Civil Aviation Authority , while in the United States the page of the Federal Aviation Administration .

As we have said, pilots are responsible for the safety of their aircraft and of the people who may cross paths with it. There is an abundance of sources for learning about the rules that govern UAS flight and on the website of ENAC you can find a complete list.

It is suggested to also draw on the documents published by ENAV in AIP Italia, which can be accessed after free registration. The D-Flight website, in fact, warns that its map may still show some gaps in the pop-ups activated by clicking on the images, and you may not find the times and days in which, sometimes, in some areas, flying is permitted. The website cites the example of “Natural parks and areas subject to wildlife protection”, for which, but it is not the only case, it is necessary to consult the specific ENR document.

The Geo Zones

As you research whether or not it is safe to fly your drone in a specific area, you will come across the term Geo Zone . The official definition is “portions of airspace where the activities of unmanned aircraft are facilitated, restricted, or excluded.”
The European Union states can apply a color code to these areas that allows one to immediately understand which and how many restrictions they are subjected to.

Red applies to excluded Geo Zones. In this case all or some classes of drones are prohibited from flying. No access is allowed to these aircraft.

Yellow indicates restricted Geo zones, where UAS activities are “limited and subject to compliance with all the conditions imposed in these zones”. It is likely that you are near airports, heliports, military installations, national parks, hospitals, nuclear power plants or other major industrial sites. In this case, prior flight authorization from the national authority is required. Some countries also offer an app that allows you to submit the application, but expect to wait at least a few days for a response. If you are planning a trip and have limited time, it is best to do this in advance.

As you might imagine, the green color corresponds to the facilitated, open Geo zones, those in which your drone can fly freely, subject to the general rules and those that apply to the class of your model.
Before asking yourself where to fly, in fact, it is better to comply with all the obligations required for UAS, based on the categories they belong to:

• UAS with class marking label: drones must be equipped with a class identification label from C0 to C4
• Home-built UAS: Privately built drones are permitted, provided they were built for personal use and not purchased as ready-made kits.
• UAS without class marking label: are only permitted if placed on the European market before 31 December 2023.

Pilots or simple operators must instead satisfy these requirements:

1. Mandatory registration for all operators on the d-flight portal .
   Once registered, make sure to affix your UAS operator identification number (QR code) to the drone. If the drone weighs less than 250 g (category C0) and is not equipped with audio or video transmission and recording tools, registration is not mandatory, and it is even more so if the device is classified as a “toy”.
2. UAS Pilot Certificate issued by the competent national authority: concerns all owners of models weighing 250 g or more. Depending on the labeling applied to the drone, passing an online exam may be sufficient or a practical exam may be necessary.
3. Insurance: Liability insurance coverage is required, appropriate to the type of activity you intend to carry out. It is advisable, when possible, even for models for which it is not mandatory.

Drone on the run: watch out for Fly-away!

A fly-away occurs when a drone loses connection with the pilot's radio control and flies away without any possibility of control. A similar situation can also occur when, for any reason, the drone is disconnected from the GPS signal and it is not possible to start the Return to Home (RTH) procedure, thanks to which the aircraft returns to base even without being directly maneuvered by the pilot.
When you experience a Fly-away, regardless of where you are, you are required to notify the relevant local authorities, such as:

• the national aviation authority ( https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/domains/civil-drones/naa ) of the country you are “flying” into
• air traffic control, if you have a flight authorization near an airport or, in any case, a restricted area. You will have to specify the route taken by the drone, the speed, the altitude, and perhaps the remaining battery life
• Last, in order of urgency, your insurance company
  
  DJI drone owners have two additional options, as long as the flight recordings are synchronized with the aircraft. You can report a “runaway drone” via Flyaway Reporting or allow DJI Support to open the case for you. It is quite clear that this type of failure risks nullifying your efforts to respect limits and no-fly rules. However, the technology integrated into the drones can often prove to be the most valuable ally in not going off course and respecting the flight limits to which you are obliged.

Geofencing and other tools to avoid exceeding limits

Many DJI drones have the function of integrated geofencing, which automatically warns you if you violate a no-fly area. The word fence in English means enclosure, and that's essentially what the tool supplied with DJI UAS does: it creates a virtual fence that the drone cannot cross.

The integrated geofencing system uses GPS location and other satellite navigation signals to warn operators that you are crossing a protected area for reasons of national security or aviation safety. If you accidentally find yourself flying in a restricted area, the drone will autonomously push the accelerator to return to an allowed zone as quickly as possible. If you have not noticed that you are in the middle of a “no fly zone” and you are about to launch your drone, do not be surprised if you do not see it take off, because it has already registered the GPS signal that prohibits it from flying. In the absence of a satellite signal at departure, your aircraft could also take off, but it will immediately return to the ground as soon as it locks on to a GPS signal.
Despite the continuous progress made by this technology, even in version 2.0, at the moment we advise against relying entirely on it to respect the no-fly zones, and to integrate it wisely with your own common sense and, above all, a careful reading of the available maps.

On the other hand, there are other tools mounted on DJI drones that help to respect the rules and flight limits. The automatic altitude limitation, for example, which can be set in the DJI flight control apps, is very useful for not exceeding the 120 m height limit from the ground.

The aforementioned Return-To-Home function limits the risk of flyaway in the event that the drone loses contact with the remote control due to interference or a drastic drop in reserve battery power. In this regard, the Sense-and-avoid technology, present in recent models produced by DJI, is able to always maintain control over the drone's autonomy and the efficiency guaranteed by the battery.

Finally, how can we not mention the standard ADS-B air traffic monitoring tool installed on all drones with AirSense. DJI AirSense is a warning system that uses ADS-B technology to provide drone pilots with greater situational awareness and help them make responsible decisions during flight. This function collects flight data automatically sent by nearby aircraft equipped with ADS-B transmitters, analyzes it to detect potential collision risks and warns users well in advance through the DJI mobile app.

It should be remembered that the new rules adopted by the European Union require, for the future, that all drones be equipped with recognition systems that allow their identification remotely and in flight, and will integrate and replace the QR Code currently applied to drones with, let's say, artisanal labeling.