What Does the New SFO Class B Airspace Update Mean For Drone Pilots?
Andrew Elefant is the Director of Policy at Kittyhawk.io, an enterprise drone software company in San Francisco, CA. Andrew is a licensed attorney in California. He holds a Commercial Drone Pilot certificate and a Private Pilot certificate with Instrument and Multi-Engine ratings.
Andrew is a member of the American Bar Association’s Forum on Air and Space Law and its Subcommittee on Drone Regulations, Operations, and Litigation. He is also a contributor to DroneLife, a leading publication on the business of drones. You can follow Andrew on LinkedIn and Twitter.
What Changed?
On August 16, 2018, the airspace around the San Francisco Bay Area underwent its most significant change in nearly two decades. The Class B airspace surrounding SFO was updated for the first time since 2000, which was based on air traffic levels from the 1990s.
Class B airspace is the airspace that surrounds nearly every large, high-traffic airport in the United States, 37 in total. Class B airspace traditionally looks like an upside-down wedding cake — a series of concentric circles surrounding the largest airport in a region and extending, at some altitudes, for 30 nautical miles in every direction and up to 10,000 feet. In the middle, located around the airport, is an area in which all flight is controlled from the surface to 10,000 feet — no drones allowed.
But I’m a Drone Pilot — How Does This Affect Me?
The good news for most drone pilots is that the Class B change largely affects altitudes higher than 400 feet AGL — so most drone pilots won’t even notice a difference. For those of you flying drones above most of the City of San Francisco, especially the popular Northeast side, the airspace change will not affect you.
One important change is that in making the airspace more reflective of actual flight operations, the FAA mostly did away with the concentric circles. The good news is that overall, less airspace in the Bay Area is covered by SFO’s Class B. The other good news, especially for those of you to the South/Southeast of SFO, is that the inner portion, where the airspace is controlled all the way to the surface, is smaller. You may find certain areas that were formerly Class B to the surface are instead Class G or E airspace. This could be the difference between needing authorization or not needing it — though watch out for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is still not available for launching your drone.
Kittyhawk Can Help
The bad news is that the area covered is less uniform and because this is the first change in a generation, there could be confusion. In practice, this means that GPS-based apps, for both manned and drone pilots, are more essential because drone pilots need to ensure that they are operating in uncontrolled airspace, particularly around SFO.
Flying with the Kittyhawk Platform is one way to ensure you are operating with the most up-do-date information possible and prove that you are complying with FAA regulations. You can check your proposed flight location and let others know you will be flying in that location. Very soon, you will be able to receive authorization to fly in controlled airspace — even some portions of Class B — straight from the Kittyhawk Platform with LAANC authorizations.
Kittyhawk can be the resource you use to make sense of these changes and maximize your ability to fly knowledgeably, safely and compliantly.
