By: Dawn Zoldi
Airspace Link has turned low-altitude airspace into an operational transportation layer by stitching together public safety, logistics, military bases and mega-events on a single digital infrastructure. On a recent Dawn of Autonomy episode, company co-founder, president and CEO Michael Healander discussed how the company’s AirHub platform has become the “digital highway” that makes routine, safe and shared drone operations possible at scale, like never before.
From GIS Vision to UTM Reality
Healander formed Airspace Link seven years ago with the ambitious goal of “safely and securely integrating drones into the national airspace and into communities at scale.” To achieve that goal, the company builds the tools the industry runs on, from recreational flyers and Part 107 operators to beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) waiver holders, Part 91 and 135 operators and now UTM and counter‑UAS users.
“We do not fly drones. We do not build drones,” Healander explained. “We build the tools to help operators… all within the same platform.” That platform, AirHub Portal, is grounded in Healander’s deep geospatial background. He and his team designed it, from day one, to marry federal aviation data with local, ground‑truth realities like land use, events, critical infrastructure and policy.
Michigan Central: A Living Lab of Operational Density
If you want to see what the future of urban drone operations looks like, Healander suggests going to Detroit, home to Airspace Link’s headquarters. Airspace Link moved from downtown into the Michigan Central Innovation District three years ago specifically to get closer to real operators and aircraft. (See prior AG coverage of Detroit’s AAM ecosystem).
Today that ecosystem includes roughly 17 drone‑related companies, seven BVLOS waivers in the same area and an emerging mix of operators, from Part 135 delivery hopefuls, security drones, media flights and more. All of them are active in the same urban environment, in large part due to the infrastructure that enables operations:
- Two permitted droneports, “firsts” in Michigan, on the rooftop and in a larger parking‑lot deployment area.
- Access‑controlled pads with cameras, LEDs that signal takeoff and landing and integrated command and control (C2) radios and ADS‑B.
- An operations center on the 11th/12th floor of the Michigan Station building, complete with 20‑foot screens, where teams run full‑day operations. Some operations remain VLOS but nevertheless leverage the entire sensor stack.
AirHub Portal manages all of it. “There’s all different operators operating in the same environment at the same time,” Healander said. “It’s pretty incredible to watch our system orchestrating that.”
AirHub Portal: Platform, Not Point Product
Healander stressed AirHub Portal is not just a pretty interface, but a platform built on APIs that OEMs and major drone software companies already embed. “Anything we see from an interface is actually built on our APIs,” he noted. A dedicated sales team now focuses on selling those APIs into other products.
AirHub Portal pulls together:
- FAA data and rules for recreational, Part 107, BVLOS waivers, Part 91, Part 135, and UTM users.
- Local and organizational policies layered on top, “You can overlay your own policies, whether it be a commercial company or a city,” Healander explained.
- UTM services, as an Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Near Term Approval Process (NTAP)‑approved system, that supports multiple BVLOS operators in the same area at the same time.
(Watch the Worldwide Premiere of AirHub Portal). When a large package‑delivery operator covers 10 cities with long‑range drones, city DFR programs ramp up, county sheriff’s offices add drones as first responders (DFR), all of them overlap. As areas hit this kind of “operational density,” as Healander referred to it, they need something more than spreadsheets, dashboards, calls, and emails.
“This is where UTM strategic deconfliction comes in,” Healander explained. “You create the operation, your intent. Our platform will tell you if you’re overlapping another operator. You adjust your altitude through our system and so on.”
But operational density is not just a technical phenomenon. It’s a training and governance challenge for BVLOS operators, Part 107 pilots, city attorneys, military lawyers and beyond. “We’re starting to see a lot of close calls with just visual line of sight operators and BVLOS operators,” Healander warned. VLOS pilots are supposed to give way, but often have no way to know a BVLOS mission is underway nearby. Accessing a platform like AirHub Portal would assist all operators, especially as airspace gets hyper‑congested and life‑or‑death missions, like organ deliveries, share the skies with routine job sites.
NTAP, Part 108 and the Shift to Strategic Deconfliction
One of the most consequential updates for Airspace Link is its NTAP win, through which the FAA certified its UTM services ahead of the forthcoming Part 146 framework for UAS Service Suppliers (USS). Healander framed this milestone as a practical response to what’s already happening in the field.
This approval comes at the right time, as the FAA moves to publish both the Part 108 BVLOS and the Part 149 UTM rules. Healander revealed that the “rumor mill” indicates the FAA has finalized both rules internally, sent it to the Department of Transportation (DOT) and is moving it to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for executive‑order alignment. This suggests a rough June through September window for publication, barring potential legal challenges which could delay things.
In the meantime, Airspace Link continues to invest ahead of the curve. The company keeps building and refining LAANC, “before you fly” tools, policy overlays and more complex trajectory‑based UTM services that can dynamically open and close small volumes of airspace as missions move. Healander used a vivid metaphor for this UTM capability, likening it to a “centipede system” that creates a flight plan, closes only the segments needed while the drone passes through, then reopens behind it to minimize disruptions for everyone else. To support public safety, Airspace Link has added an “emergency button” in its UTM that allows agencies to flag a mission as urgent. The system doesn’t stop other flights, but it automatically notifies overlapping commercial operators that an emergency operation is underway.
That logic explains why one of his colleagues, Rich Fahle, refers to AirHub Portal as a “digital highway” in the sky. It doesn’t create rigid fixed corridors. It enables dynamic, temporary volumes that avoid “upsetting Amazon, Zipline, or Wing” while still giving public safety and DFR the priority they need in emergency situations.
Counter‑UAS: Friend, Foe and the Single Pane of Glass
Healander revealed another huge update from the company. Airspace Link now integrates detection and deconfliction into a single pane of glass. “Who’s who? Friend from foe is where we start as a company,” he said.
How does it do this? Airspace Link ingests data from Remote Identification (Remote ID), radio frequency (RF) detection, radar including sensors like Echodyne and other systems to help agencies:
- Identify their own drones so they don’t “shoot down their own drone.”
- Whitelist commercial operators so any concerns can be quickly matched to known flights.
- Share multi‑jurisdictional data between city, county and regional public safety agencies.
This same model scales up for mega‑events. In support of FIFA World Cup planning, Airspace Link will wire multiple detection systems, some tied to NFL stadiums, others procured through new multimillion‑dollar buys, plus federal sensors, into a single view. The platform then federates data across multiple cities, counties and even states, registers public safety drones, separates white‑listed media and team practice drones and issues alerts when unknown aircraft appear.
This digital upgrade for cities, combined with new authorities for State, Local, Tribal and Territorial (SLTT) law enforcement under the SAFER Skies Act creates a solid combination of airspace awareness, multi‑agency integration and true counter‑UAS authority. This represents a major turning point in airspace awareness. (See prior AG coverage of SAFER Skies).
Military Bases as “Mini Cities”: Joint Base Charleston and Beyond
The same digital roadway approach for cities and major events now also reshapes how U.S. military installations think about drones on and around their bases. Healander pointed to Joint Base Charleston as a flagship example. This complex environment with Army, Air Force, civilian operators had growing concerns about unknown drones both inside and outside the fence.
Airspace Link deployed a centralized system that requires anyone wanting to fly on base to use the platform, follow a pre‑flight checklist and obtain approvals from designated authorities. Once that framework was in place, the base added a Skydio Dock, obtained a BVLOS waiver on its own property within a week, and layered on ZeroEyes’ gun‑detection analytics for force protection.
“It was pretty neat for us to watch our system go from ‘no one can do anything with drones’ to a base that’s fully operational,” Healander said. He continued, “Now people can fly drones beyond visual line of sight on Joint Base Charleston and that same system connects them to public safety outside the fence line.” With detection integrated into the AirHub Portal, unknown drones approaching the installation can quickly be classified as friends or potential threat.
Healander believes this military implementation can provide a blueprint for other bases through connecting civil and defense use cases. He predicts the base-level model could scale more broadly to an architecture where national‑level authorities could zoom out across all participating bases, even as each installation retains its own tailored system.
Where to Plug In: From Detroit to San Diego
For cities, agencies and operators wanting to join this emerging digital roadway, Healander recommends engaging early and building infrastructure now. New federal funding, including roughly another $250 million flowing to U.S. metro areas in association with the FIFA World Cup games, will reward communities that can align DFR programs, package deliveries and public safety on shared infrastructure, instead of piecemeal pilots.
You can find Michael and the Airspace Link team in person this year in a couple of different places:
- At the 5th Annual Law-Tech Connect 2026, co-located with XPONENTIAL 2026 in Detroit, where Healander will moderate the “State of the States Vol. III” Panel.
- Hosting operators and a UTM‑enabled ecosystem also during XPONENTIAL, including a Great Lakes chapter street party at Michigan Central and the Book Depository building, with multiple local and “big” operators flying cooperatively through UTM.
- Participating in Esri’s massive User Conference in San Diego in July, where cities can see how to log into their own GIS accounts, pull authoritative layers and push customized maps directly into AirHub for pilots.
- Joining other industry events like Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas in September.
Airspace Link encourages city officials, DFR programs, logistics operators and base leaders to reach out directly, especially in metro areas anticipating World Cup, national celebrations, or large‑scale public events. “We’re really trying to be that neutral platform,” Healander said, “and make sure everyone can operate at scale.” Communities that start building their digital roadway now will be the ones best positioned to say “yes” to autonomy at scale later.