About UK Drone Map
UK Drone Map is a free, no-sign-up planning map that shows UK drone pilots where they can legally fly. It overlays official UK airspace, airport Flight Restriction Zones, live NOTAMs, weather and statutory conservation designations on a single interactive map that keeps working offline after first load. It is built and maintained by an independent UK developer and drone pilot, and the full source code is public on GitHub.
Open the live map →Why it exists
Checking whether a flight is legal in the UK means cross-referencing half a dozen official sources: NATS AIS for NOTAMs and FRZs, the AIP for controlled airspace, and four different national agencies for conservation designations that may carry byelaws or access restrictions. UK Drone Map puts all of those layers on one map so the pre-flight picture takes seconds instead of an evening — and it costs nothing, requires no account, and collects no personal data.
Where the data comes from
| Dataset | Source | Refresh cadence |
|---|---|---|
| NOTAMs | NATS / UK AIS PIB feed | Every 4 hours, automatically |
| Flight Restriction Zones | NATS (official FRZ dataset) | With each NATS data release |
| Airspace (CTR, TMA, CTA, ATZ, MATZ, TMZ) | OpenAIP | AIRAC cycle (every 28 days) |
| Temporary danger areas, AIP supplements, briefing sheets | UK AIP / CAA publications | As published; each notice gets its own detail page |
| Conservation — England | Natural England (SSSI, SAC, SPA, Ramsar, NNR, AONB) | Quarterly review |
| Conservation — Scotland | NatureScot (SSSI, NNR, NSA, MPA) | Quarterly review |
| Conservation — Wales | Natural Resources Wales | Quarterly review |
| Conservation — Northern Ireland | DAERA / NIEA | Quarterly review |
| National Trust & Forestry land | National Trust, Forestry England / Scotland / Wales | Quarterly review |
| Weather | Open-Meteo | Live, at time of viewing |
| Place data | © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) | With each location-page rebuild |
Full licence and attribution details are on the Terms & Attribution page.
Methodology and editorial standards
- Every layer is sourced from the official publisher of that dataset — nothing is hand-drawn or estimated.
- NOTAM parsing is validated against the source briefing on every refresh; entries that cannot be parsed with confidence are excluded rather than guessed at.
- Regulatory summaries (registration thresholds, FRZ rules, night-flying requirements) are reviewed against CAA publications and updated when the rules change — most recently for the 100 g Flyer ID threshold introduced on 1 January 2026.
- The blog and location pages carry visible dates so you can judge freshness yourself.
- Original research — like the FRZ towns study — publishes its full methodology and is reproducible from the public repository.
What UK Drone Map is not
UK Drone Map is a planning aid, not an authority. It is not a substitute for the official NATS AIS briefing, CAA guidance, or the legal pre-flight obligations placed on remote pilots under UK aviation law. Always verify against official sources before flying — and treat any disagreement between this map and an official source as a bug worth reporting.
Contact and corrections
Found incorrect data, a missing zone, or a parsing error? Please open an issue on GitHub — data-accuracy reports are prioritised above everything else.