Military Airspace & Special-Use Areas

ummary: A guide to the military and special-use airspace layers on the map and what each abbreviation means.

The Military Airspace section works the same way as Civil Airspace — grouped by altitude band, colour-coded, with a click-for-info tooltip on every overlay — but covers military and other special-use airspace.

Surface-Level

• Hazard Areas, Prohibited Areas, Restricted Areas, Danger Areas — areas where flying is hazardous, forbidden, or restricted for specific reasons (e.g. live firing, parachuting).
• Low Flying Areas (LFA) — areas designated for military low flying training.
• Range Operating Areas — active ranges used for weapons or training.
• Helicopter Night Training — designated areas for military night helicopter training.
• ADIZ (Air Defence Identification Zone) — airspace where aircraft must identify themselves for national security purposes.

Low Level

• Danger Areas, Restricted Areas, Military Training Areas at low level.
• Night Rotary — night helicopter training areas.
• Intense Aerial Activity — areas of concentrated military flying.
• VATA (Valley Aerial Tactics Areas) — low-level valley training routes.
• RN Fighter Control — Royal Navy fighter control areas.

Upper Level

• Danger Areas, MTA (Military Training Area), TRA (Temporary Reserved Area).
• Refuelling Areas (AARA) — Air-to-Air Refuelling Areas, where tanker aircraft meet receivers.
• Military Training Areas, VATA, RN Fighter Control at upper level.

Operations & Sectors

• Radar Corridors and TACAN Routes — designated transit routes for military traffic.
• Military Sectors — military air traffic control sector boundaries.
• AWACS — orbit areas used by Airborne Warning & Control System aircraft.
• Lakenheath Waypoints & Surge Sectors — waypoints and sectors specific to RAF Lakenheath operations.

Reading an airspace popup

Click any area and the popup opens with a sentence saying what that kind of airspace is, then its class with what that means for a flight, the vertical limits in words (From the surface to 22,000 ft above sea level), the hours (the AIP writes hours as winter time with summer time in brackets; the popup says so), and for danger and restricted areas the activity, the service, the contact and the authority with the shorthand spelt out. Each frequency in a popup says what the service does and which band it sits in.