Can you fly? DJI NFZs v UK FRZs and other Air Space

Edit: Updated for the advances in Drone Scene … and the fact that NATS stepped aside from Drone Assist.

This is NOT what Drone Assist is doing - far from it. It’s not being “cautious”.

It’s important to understand the difference between DJI Flysafe and Drone Scene / Drone Assist. There are legal implications!

DJI’s Flysafe includes a “global”, rather simplistic, solution to prevent people accidentally flying over major airports and other major, critical installations, and indeed from taking off in these areas. (Note the word “major”!)

DJI doesn’t actually try to impose the genuine national legal restrictions or legislation in any country. Globally there would be just too much data to include in the database and, to be current, updates would be horrendous and frequent and need one huge amount of memory to store (= £££).

Consider this …
image
… imagine, just considering airports and nothing else, the number globally.

Indeed, in the UK, for larger airports the DJI NFZ doesn’t match the CAA’s specification for the size and shape of the UK’s FRZs (which are legal restrictions!), and most smaller airfields don’t feature at all … along with many other smaller restricted zones.

Drone Scene / Drone Assist , on the other hand … it’s UK data for UK drone flying. It advises you of the most important aspect of flying your drone un the UK …. where UK legislation says you cant! … and many other restrictions/advisories that one needs to be aware of (many permanent, some temporary) that just do not feature in DJI Flysafe.

Remember, though, it’s the DJI NFZs that prevent the drone actually taking off … even if it’s all tickety-boo in Drone Scene / Drone Assist. So you may find places you can’t actually fly that are in fact totally legal to fly. These would need to be unlocked via DJI.

So - in short - DJI’s Flysafe doesn’t ensure you are flying legally!

Not a perfect situation, but it’s what we have.

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