Airspace authorizations

Airspace authorization is a record of paper your pilot already holds. BeaconUAV does not file with the FAA and does not verify a clearance with them — authorization is issued by an FAA-approved provider to the pilot's own account, and nothing here can request it or read it back. What BeaconUAV does is keep the record and tell you when it stops covering the job you are about to fly.

Recording an authorization

On a client job, open the Authorizations tab and use Record one. The record carries:

• Type — LAANC, Part 107 waiver, COA, or landowner permission
• Reference number — what the issuer wrote. Required: "we had a LAANC" is not evidence, and a record without a number cannot be matched against the paper
• Area — the grid, parcel, or a plain description. BeaconUAV does not geofence, and a boundary drawn from a screenshot would be a guess
• Max altitude — up to 500 ft
• Valid from / valid until — the window the authorization covers
• Evidence — an optional PDF or screenshot of the document, kept in a private bucket

The same paper can also be filed in the client's document base as an FAA authorization, so the client sees one document rather than two records of it.

When a job is not covered

If a job's scheduled window does not fall inside any recorded authorization, the job says so. This is a warning, not a block — the same distinction scheduling makes for pilot conflicts. Equipment is hard-blocked because the same airframe cannot be in two places; paperwork is a human decision, because a manager may know a grid was re-issued an hour ago and the record has not caught up.

A manager can acknowledge the gap and continue. Nothing is prevented, and the acknowledgement is not written anywhere: the warning exists to make the question visible at the moment it matters, not to add a second record of the same decision.

The warning only appears for organizations that have asked to be told. Turn on Ask for a signed site authorization before every job in CRM settings and the requirement follows the job; leave it off and BeaconUAV does not nag an operator who handles this by habit.

Keeping records honest

An authorization is a claim about a window, not a permanent clearance. A LAANC grant is good for a day and a grid; a landowner permission is good for a parcel. When the window lapses, the job warns again — which is the point of recording an end date at all.

Unlike an incident report, an authorization is not safety evidence. A withdrawn grant is a housekeeping matter, so managers can correct or remove one. Members can read the record but cannot add or remove one.