Just spotted on drone scene (Blackpool area), not seen it before.
@Seadog Yes, this is an official UK aviation alert called a NOTAM (Notice to Aviation), which states that the Blackpool Airport Aerodrome Traffic Zone (ATZ) is being activated outside of its standard operational hours specifically for pre-arranged flight movements only on October 5, 2026.
In simple terms, Blackpool Airport is temporarily “waking up” its official controlled airspace for exactly one hour on the evening of October 5th.
Normally, when a smaller airport closes its air traffic control tower for the night, its surrounding strict airspace zone (the ATZ) is no longer active, meaning the airspace effectively reverts to standard open rules. However, because a specific plane has booked a late flight (a “pre-arranged movement”), the airport is keeping the lights on and the airspace active between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM UTC.
What this means for Drone Pilots is that one cannot fly a drone inside an active Aerodrome Traffic Zone (ATZ) without explicit permission from the airport’s Air Traffic Control. The impact of this is that even if one usually flies in this area after normal daytime airport hours, one must keep one’s drone grounded inside this zone during this specific 19:00 to 20:00 window, unless one has booked a flight clearance directly with Blackpool Air Traffic Control.
And as we all know here, paid for the privilege of seeking such permission
As always, it’s not what you know, or even who you know. It’s how much money you are prepared to part with.
Odd that, seeing as the ‘window’ is within the airports normal operating hours (as per their (website)
It seems that this NOATM exposes the limitations of how the current system registers and presents data.
I suggest an extra cross referencing of dynamic flight plan data against current permanent airspace restrictions as a fail safe, and also a parsing mechanism to identify these redundancies, and to convert these to dialogues with additional easily understandable context in a tl/dr section at the bottom for ‘at a glance’ clarity.
Developers can use this description with any LLM coding tool to gain an understanding of how the code may be implemented, and this would vastly accelerate development for this function.
Fight the bastards with CAP722C (3.2)
People should tell them to fly that up their flagpole and salute it.
I’d never pay to fly in anyone’s airspace.
CAP 722C does not in itself create a legal prohibition on aerodrome operators recovering administrative costs associated with processing FRZ permission requests
As@stevesb points out it is active 24/7, but this blue zone extends beyond the normal FRZ quite significantly.
I’m always curious what the flight is when its outside normal operating hours. ![]()
Usually local private flyers getting their night flying hours/training in. Never seen an extra notam for it though as normal FRZ covers it.
It was the 100 th anniversary of Stanley park. The celebrations included a drone light show. You can see the show on YouTube https://youtu.be/pjQrWOeG7FY?is=H7LjMy3ulGRnzw8b
That was the day before the NOTAM ![]()
the notam wasn’t centered anywhere near stanley park so a doubt it was that as you wouldnt have a drone show 4km away from the event.


