Keep It Legal

Best practices for airport notifications.

- Franklin D. Mellott

For anyone that wants to fly an sUAS, it’s important to know that Public Law 112-95 §336(a)(5) requires that when an sUAS is to be flown within five miles of an airport, “…the operator of the aircraft provides the airport operator and the airport air traffic control tower (when an air traffic facility is located at the airport) with prior notice of the operation…”

I’m fortunate to have a small park within a block of my home where I can fly my RC helicopters, but both my home and the park are inside that five-mile ring from a hospital heliport and a class D (towered) airport. Through a combination of prior experience and recent practice, I’ve become proficient at these notifications. After a tower controller complimented me last weekend, adding, “I wish everyone did it like you do,” I thought I’d write something so that everyone could benefit.

I spent my entire career flying tactical jets in carrier-based Naval Aviation, a world where communications brevity is raised to an art form. At nine miles a minute, you don’t use two words when one will do and you don’t talk at all if not absolutely necessary. Crisp, clear, unambiguous, and brief communications are necessary in TACAIR, so I built many good habits over that 22-year career. I found that these same good habits made my airport notifications go very smoothly.

The law says that you have to notify airports, but the law does not say how to do it. If you can get a permanent written agreement, then great. This info will help you put together a good first draft of information they’d likely need.

But nothing says that the airports have to agree to accept it. Trying to force it on them only makes your life tougher—they get 51 percent of the vote. My local airport said that they wanted calls each time, so I didn’t argue. I do it the way they asked.