The AirShare Pilot website has been updated and includes some new functions available to drone pilots such as alerts of nearby flights activated by other pilots, visibility of map layers, and hours of service at Airways’ control towers.
This latest update has been a key focus of the AirShare development team over the past few months, in our efforts to improve the AirShare experience for drone pilots and air traffic controllers, and streamline the process of logging flights and gaining authorisations.
We hope you find these new features useful. As always, we welcome feedback and suggestions on how we can further improve the pilot app – please send through any ideas and feedback to us at info@airshare.co.nz.
Alerts of nearby activated flights
Drone pilots with an activated flight will receive an alert when another flight activates nearby. Clicking on that alert will take the pilot to their active flight and open the panel with the nearby activated flight.
Hours of Airways control towers service now available
Not all Airways control towers in New Zealand are on watch at all times. In Pilot Web, users can view the Airways Control tower schedule from the Advisories list modal using the pin, by clicking on any control zone on the map.
Please note that these are the published hours and they may change without notice – please check with your local tower to confirm. A future AirShare pilot app enhancement will show users exactly when a tower is on or off watch.
Re-request a digital activation request
Drone pilots are able to re-request a digital activation request that has expired after five minutes. The screenshot below shows what occurs in the app when you submit a re-request.
Flight Authorisation cancelled
The Flight Authorisation cancel feature allows ATCs to cancel a flight plan to a pilot for a specific flight. This feature is designed to streamline communication between Airspace Managers and pilots during an activated flight.
Improvement on Nearby and Overlapping flights feature
Pilots are now able to find out more information about the function of nearby and overlapping flights, when using the AirShare pilot website.
Click on the Overlapping Details button to display a table containing details of nearby and overlapping flights – as below.
This is an improvement on our current nearby and overlapping flights function.
Flight request form enhancements
The rule part section of a flight request has moved higher up the request page. This is designed to allow for a more streamlined flight request entry for Part 102 pilots.
Map layers
Pilot Web now has a method to allow easier selection of map styles.
It also now displays a button to enable drone pilots to show and hide different map layers – this currently contains Ground Advisories and NOTAMS.
Default UA settings
When adding a UA, you can now add default altitude and emergency procedures on that UA which will flow through to your flight request page. Please note that this feature is optional.
