Understanding Flight Zones in London

A post was merged into an existing topic: Where i can fly my drone in Tooting, London?

I flew inside Heathrow Airport frz a couple of weeks ago. I have no a2cofc and it was for recreation purposes. I Simply filled in the NATS request for non standard flight and it was passed to Heathrow within a day and Heathrow granted the permission after I gave them exact locations of the flights I would be taking. All within 5 days, but do expect it to take longer.

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That’s interesting to know.

What about the DJI No Fly Zone? Did you have to get the unlock code from DJI?
Or was the area permitted within the app?

Yeah you need to provide DJI with the authorisation granted by NATS and Heathrow when you apply for the DJI Geo unlock. But that only took 20min to receive back from DJI at about 10pm.

Thanks. That’s good to know. Impressive from DJI.

I keep on seeing great drone shots on fb that others have taken over London in particular tower bridge, and id love to fly mine there. But according to the app its a no fly zone. Will the app actually allow me to take off without permissions?
Ive tried to ask for permissions b4, in other areas yet never succeeded!

@Alanlever I’ve moved your post to an existing thread on this subject. Scroll up, have a read.

Hi, isn’t this response a little confusing? Suppose

  • I fly any Mavic above 250g
  • I am in possession of a A2 CofC certificate
  • I am registered as drone owner and flyer

Wouldn’t that allow me to fly in A2 Transitional category in a built-up area so long as I am further than 50m away from any uninvolved persons including those possibly being inside buildings and vehicles?

This response from CAA is from year 2021 when A2 Transitional was already a thing. Why don’t they mention it?

Of course it’d be a challenge to find a place further than 50m away from ppl inside R160 except for the river. Which btw is its own challenge, it’d be nice to understand the requirements I’d need to satisfy to fly over Thames legally… But that’s separate from what CAA said in their response quoted above.

Hmm… can’t edit my own 1st post on this forum… I meant to correct it to say “I am registered as drone operator” and within “50m horizontally away from uninvolved persons”

Hi, Ive just purchased my first drone today and Im eager to fly it asap. I live in London and most of central London is either restricted or in the enhanced warning zone. Im flying the dji Mini 3 Pro which is under 250 grams.

When I go to fly the drone in the enhanced warning zone, it lets me takeoff and gives me a warning which I need to accept. Ive been doing some research about flying in the enhanced warning and the warning zone but im unable to understand if im allowed to fly in these 2 zones without permission or not.

Also any reccomendations for flying in London and around would be nice!

Hi @Karthik and welcome to GADC, have a read of this thread it will answer most of your questions.

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As suggested the thread has the answers. Short answer is “No”, this guide seems to give a good summary.

If you’re very keen you could submit that “non-standard flight application” but you need permission from land owner to land/take off first. Canary Wharf estate I guess is out of question but you could try with public owned land. Not sure who to ask for permission though and sure about the costs.

You might be as disappointed as everybody else to find out that Royal Parks located in London have a serious prohibition on them too, the only exception being a small circle in the middle of Richmond park which is further restricted on weekends after 13:00. Wimbledon park has local bylaws restricting it too. National Trust generally retricts your ability to land/take off and probably operate controls too at least theoretically.

I find dronescene.co.uk useful, it does mention places where people successfully flied in the past. Not a guarantee but a good guide.

And it’s written and maintained by the good folks here :wink:

Hi all!
I’m new to drones but I flew my DJI mini 2(yes I know🥱!) for the 1st time the other day in Richmond park.
Beautiful day & great experience until the deer moved close & I had to stop.
My question is, where else will a sub 250g drone be allowed to fly in South East London? There just seem to be a lot of restrictions.
Thanks for any advice!

Hi @Yorky and welcome to GADC

I’ve put your post here, lots of info on London restrictions.

If this does not answer your question, try a search for London

Or check out our very own Dronescene

Hi everyone
I’ve read the majority of this post and several others and whilst what I’m going to ask is not directly linked to London it’s kind of related :crossed_fingers:

Can anyone tell me where I can find out what the EGR Codes mean / who they are relevant to (manned aircraft or UAV etc) please ?

I convinced myself that I couldn’t fly in a certain area as it looked to me that it was a FRZ but after showing it to a friend he informed me that the EGR code only applied to helicopters and drone flights were ok.

Is there a list of the codes somewhere I can view ?

Thanks in advance

Just found this on YouTube Flying in London is this a no?
Very doubtful had permission.
At 0.34 flyer over strata SSE1 building @147m

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strata_SE1

Over Tower of London day and night

I only noted two, possibly 3 locations in a CTR.

As for the rest, especially the City of London and Canary Wharf… Who knows if they had permission. :man_shrugging:

I was under the impression city is a no drone zone Egr158 ?
Fly over 120m?
Looking at bio try’s multiple times per week.

It is generally but I’ve seen commercial flights logged on the likes of Drone Assist etc for flights within the city itself. It’s hard to say without knowing if these flights were legit or not.