What’s New in LAANC 4.0?

Below is a rundown of new features, capabilities, and notable changes to the new LAANC system.

New features in Air Control:

• Request on behalf of another user on the account, so managers of a drone program can request for her team’s behalf to optimize for team management and compliance.
• Users on the web can edit authorizations and change key information versus before needing to cancel and resubmit.
• Also note, Air Control supports only commercial (Part 107) authorizations.

New Capabilities Across the Kittyhawk Platform:

• More access to airspace.
  • Users can have up to three overlapping authorizations within 100 miles.
    • Before users could not have any overlapping authorizations.
    • This will help users plan out their day and have authorization across more areas and more time.
  • Each authorization can span 10 miles.
    • Before this was limited 1 mile.
    • So not just more authorizations, but more area.
• More detailed LAANC information.
  • Airports have more detailed metadata that will mean more authorizations at more airports (whereas before there were often metadata conflicts).
  • LAANC grids specific when further coordination is available or not (to help with planning and understanding what ceilings you can fly to).
  • Part-time airports now help users understand when LAANC may or may not be required (e.g. if controlled airspace reverts to uncontrolled airspace at 5pm).
• New map styles.
  • There’s now a new combined layer that has merged UASFM (facility grids) with controlled airspace to help give users a clearer understanding of when/where LAANC is needed or not.
• More user controls.
  • Users can “close” operations.
    • Before you couldn’t change or cancel an authorization once it was active. So if you had an authorization that ran from 10 am-2 pm and you were done at 11 am, you couldn’t do anything with that existing authorization.
    • Now you can “close” that authorization to end earlier, and thus go create additional authorizations if needed.