so ive been trying to get authorization to fly near a small regional airport, nothing crazy, just want to do some photography work about 2 miles out from the runway. submitted through aloft and got denied instantly. checked airspace.faa.gov and the area shows up as class D but the grid square im in shows 0ft authorization altitude which i guess means automatic denial?

what i dont understand is that ive seen other people flying in what looks like the exact same zone on youtube and stuff. is there some other way to get auth for these 0ft zones or is it literally just not possible without a COA or whatever. been going back and forth on this for like two weeks and its getting frustrating

yeah the 0ft grid squares are basically a hard no through LAANC, the system just cant approve those automatically. its not a bug, those areas are set that way intentionally usually because of flight paths or something the FAA decided is too sensitive for auto-approval. your only real option is to apply for a waiver or COA directly through DroneZone which is a whole other process and takes a while, like weeks minimum sometimes months depending on what youre asking for.

the youtube videos you saw might have been filmed before the airspace was reclassified, or honestly some people just fly anyway and dont say anything about it. not recommending that obviously but thats probably whats going on

had something similar happen to me last year near a smaller airport. ended up just calling the airport tower directly and they were actually pretty cool about it, told me to call on the day and they'd give me a verbal clearance for my window. i know thats not technically the official process but for class D thats still a legitimate option i think, at least thats what i was told. might be worth a shot before going through the whole COA thing