You are at a job site at 8:47am. The realtor wants overhead photos at 9:00. Are you even inside a controlled shelf, and if so what is the ceiling? That is the question that costs the first ten minutes, and it is the one AeroCopilot answers immediately — against the official FAA UAS Facility Map rather than a shelf you read off a chart by eye.
How AeroCopilot handles it
- 1Check the site from the drone-mode dashboard
Your operating area is resolved against the official FAA UAS Facility Map — whether the flight needs authorization at all, and the exact ceiling for that grid cell.
- 2Build the §107.41 request without re-keying anything
Aircraft registration, Part 107 certificate and location come from your profile; the request is PIC-attested and written to an append-only audit log. Submission itself goes through an FAA-approved USS — in-app submission arrives when our credentials are activated.
- 3Watch the status timeline
Submitted → Validated → Approved (or Pending Manual Review), driven by webhook updates rather than an email refresh. The timeline is built and waiting on the same credential activation.
- 4Fly with the auth attached to your flight log
AeroCopilot binds the authorization to the mission record, so the approval and the flight it belongs to stay together instead of living in a separate portal.
- 5Auto-close the auth on landing
GPS auto-tracking detects the landing and closes the authorization to keep the airspace clean for the next operator.
Outcome
You know before 8:50 whether the site needs authorization and at what ceiling, with the request built and the evidence trail kept against the flight — instead of reading a shelf off a chart and re-keying the same aircraft details into a separate site.