Upcoming UAS Operating Area (UOA) Changes

This notice is to inform of an upcoming change to UAS Operating Area (UOA) capabilities.

Leidos flight service will be updating the UOA capabilities to only include UAS Notice To Airman (NOTAMs). This means we will no longer be supporting self-reported UOA areas which are not associated with NOTAMs. The majority of the UOA functionality will stay the same, however the service will only include UOAs that generate or are derived from UAS NOTAMs. This change is planned to go into effect around October 2019.

Currently our web site and web services have two types of UOA, those that are associated with NOTAMs and those that a UAS operator chooses to create. NOTAMs are required only of certain commercial flights, and only those that are required to submit a NOTAM can submit a NOTAM. We also currently allow any user to create a UAS Operating Area (UOA), but it is not required. The issue with this current paradigm is that we are unable to create a full and accurate picture of all UAS operations. Due to these concerns, we are augmenting our UOA service to only focus on the UAS NOTAMs. We will still support UOA management and publication, but only for UOAs associated with NOTAMs.

Note: To minimize impact to web service users, these changes do not impact the web services WSDL. However, the UOA management functions will require NOTAM use, and the UOA data feeds will only include NOTAM UOAs.

This change will include the following modifications to our services:

Leidos Flight Service Website changes

• The UAS management web page will be updated to reflect that UOA creation requires a valid COA and NOTAM submission is required.

• The UOA graphics and briefings will be updated to only include NOTAM UOAs

   

Leidos Flight Service Web Service changes

• UOA management will require submitNOTAM to be set to true and a valid coaId entered, otherwise an error will be returned. (WS: FileUasOperatingArea, AmendUasOperatingArea)

  • UOA data feeds will only include NOTAM UOAs. (WS: RetrieveUasOperatingArea, RetrieveUasOperatingAreaSummaries, WebServicePushUOAChange

  • The UOA section in briefings will only include NOTAM UOAs (WS: AreaBriefing, RouteBriefing)

  • UOA Alerting will only include NOTAM UOAs (WS: WebServicePushNGBAlert, WebServicePushUOAChange, RetrieveAlertByFlightId, RetrieveAlertByRoute)