Hi everyone, I live in Canada and just got my Basic Operations Flight Certificate in order to follow the new drone laws that came into effect this summer. This license allows me to operate my drone as long as I'm not within 5.6km (3 nautical miles) of an airport or within 1.9km (1 nautical mile) of a heliport.

My question is, how would I go about calculating the geographical distance from an airport or heliport to a specific location? I've tried using Google Maps but I only seem to be able to get the roadway/travel distance between two points, and not the "as the bird flies" distance between two points. I just want to make sure that the areas I'm planning to fly my drone fall well outside of these ranges since I live in a place with an airport and (I believe) several heliports.

Is there a specific tool/app/service I can use to calculate the distance between two points on a digital map?


Thanks very much in advance for any help!

Any airport that has a NAV CANADA facility (FSS/Tower) is also in controlled airspace so you actually have to stay farther away, up to 7NM depending on the airport. The DJI Geo zones do NOT take this into account. I just recently looked at the AirMap app and it correctly displays the controlled airspace you would need to avoid.  There is a kmz file that’s available for Google Earth that does a similar thing, but the AirMap app seems pretty convenient to use so far.

Thanks Dutchpirate. That's very useful

On google maps, right click and use the measure distance option.