UAS Operating Areas (UOAs)
Background
UAS Operating Areas (UOAs) are communicated via NOTAM to provide awareness of UAS operations being conducted under an FAA issued Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA). These activities include flights which might normally be prohibited under Part 107 regulations, so without the prior awareness provided by these NOTAMs other operators would not expect to encounter them. Note that only COA holders are required to report UOAs. These are generally law enforcement organizations, fire departments, search and rescue units, schools, universities, and research institutions.
UOAs can define either a single operation or a recurring operation over a period of days or months.
The UOA request body
Request bodies for /uoa endpoints are “basic”, meaning the only information you need to provide are those parameters that define your area of interest (point/distance, route, or poly).
The UOA response body
As with all request types (except airspace), the response body is a json object containing a single element named found. The contents of found will be a GeoJSON FeatureCollection with one Feature per UOA found in your requested area of interest. The feature properties given for each UOA are:
- startDateTime: beginning of scheduled activity
- endDateTime: end of scheduled activity
- text: a textual description of the area, affected altitudes, and schedule (for recurring operations)
When a COA holder submits a UOA NOTAM they have three options for defining the area:
- circular area (center point + radius)
- non-circular area: boundary defined by a series of points
- line: a line defined by multiple points and a width
Regardless of how the submitter defines the area, /uoa endpoints will always return geometry of type Polygon as shown in this distance request (sent via POST request to https://dflight-api.ljaero.com/us/v1/uoa/distance-query). The dashed grey circle shows our requested area.
{
"longitude": -98.095,
"latitude": 28.021,
"distance": 25000
} 
