so ive been trying to get authorization for a spot near a regional airport, not a huge one, just a small regional thing and the airspace map on the FAA DroneZone site shows it as a LAANC-enabled facility. i submitted through aloft and it came back denied almost instantly. no explanation just denied.

the thing is the grid square i selected shows 0ft which i know means i need auth but i thought LAANC was supposed to handle that automatically? my friend flies in similar areas all the time and says he never has issues. im flying a mini 3 pro if that matters, under 250g so i thought maybe i dont even need to go through this but someone told me the 249g exemption doesnt apply near airports regardless of weight. now im confused about what rules actually apply to me here.

do i just need to call the airport directly or is there another way to get this approved? genuinely dont know what step im missing

the 0ft ceiling grid squares are basically a hard block, LAANC cant auto-approve those, it just immediately kicks back a denial. you have to go through the full Part 107 waiver process for those which takes like 90 days and thats not an exaggeration. i went through it once and it was a whole thing.

your friend is probably flying in adjacent squares that have like 100ft or 200ft ceilings, those go through fine. zoom way in on the map and check exactly which square youre in, the boundaries are small and it makes a huge difference. also yeah the sub-250g thing doesnt get you out of airspace rules, that exemption is only for registration not airspace authorization.

calling the airport tower directly actually worked for me one time but that was a really small uncontrolled field and the guy was super chill about it. i would not count on that being a reliable method lol. mostly just seconding what the other person said about checking the exact grid square, i made that mistake my first time and thought i was denied when i was actually just one block over from where i wanted to fly