so i've been trying to get authorization for a spot i want to fly at, its like maybe 3 miles from a small regional airport, nothing major, small prop planes mostly. put in the request through airmap and it just says denied, no real explanation. i'm using a mini 3 pro which is registered and everything. i did the trust test a while back too.

the thing is i can see on the map that the area shows as like a light blue LAANC grid and not a hard no fly zone, so i thought it would go through automatically. is there something i'm missing or do i have to do a full part 107 waiver situation? that seems like overkill for just a casual shoot of an old bridge

yeah the light blue grid areas are where LAANC *can* auto-approve but it depends on the altitude you requested and how the FAA has that specific grid cell set up. some cells have a 0 ft ceiling which basically means auto-approval is never gonna happen, you'd have to go through DroneZone and submit a manual waiver request. check what the actual ceiling is for your specific grid cell, not just the overall class D or whatever the airspace is. if it shows 0 you're kinda stuck unless you go the manual route which yeah takes longer but isnt as bad as it sounds for a one time thing

i had the exact same thing happen to me last summer. turns out the grid cell i was in had a 0 ceiling even though visually it looked fine on the map. ended up just emailing the airport directly which i didnt even know was a thing you could do but someone here told me about it. the tower guys were actually really cool about it and gave me a phone number to call. obviously thats not official authorization but they appreciated the heads up and told me the traffic situation for when i wanted to fly. still filed through dronezone tho to keep it legit