For those unaware of what's going on to speed this process up, the FAA is in the process of releasing UAS Facility maps of airports, suggesting altitudes you can safely fly within 5mi of an airport, in an effort to help 107 pilots breeze through and expedite the process to get COAs for low risk flight scenarios, which has been the subject here. There are no promises yet about how much this will speed things up, but I perceive it will be much quicker, eventually. The first portion of these maps was released a couple weeks ago, and every couple of months going forward the FAA will release more airport facility maps. I have no idea how long it will take to complete a grid map for every airport across the whole country, maybe a year or two I'm thinking. When completed, and with successful operations, and no major flight incidents, this new COA process could turn into a quick approval process, maybe days instead of months......but I assume that won't be until we get down the road, in a year or two. Here are some FAQs about these new maps.I just want the waivers process for airspace approvals to be faster... days rather than months.
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