Aviation Geofencing Guide
Set up virtual airspace boundaries and receive instant alerts when aircraft enter, exit, or dwell in your monitored zones.
What is Aviation Geofencing?
A geofence is a virtual boundary around a geographic area. In aviation, geofences create monitored zones in airspace, when an aircraft crosses the boundary, the system triggers an alert. This is used for airport perimeter security, restricted airspace monitoring, VIP protection, drone detection zones, and temporary flight restriction (TFR) compliance.
Unlike physical fences, geofences are invisible, configurable, and can be created, modified, or removed instantly. AeroScope checks every tracked aircraft against all active geofences every 12 seconds.
Zone Types
Circle zone
Define a center point (latitude/longitude) and a radius in nautical miles. Simple and effective for point-based monitoring, airports, facilities, events.
Polygon zone
Define a series of vertices to create an irregular boundary. Use for oddly-shaped restricted areas, flight corridors, or complex perimeters that circles can't represent.
Alert Types
| Alert | Triggers When | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| ENTRY | An aircraft enters the zone boundary | Intrusion detection, approach monitoring |
| EXIT | An aircraft leaves the zone boundary | Departure monitoring, escort tracking |
| DWELL | An aircraft remains inside the zone beyond a threshold | Loitering detection, surveillance monitoring |
Step-by-Step Setup
- Open the GEOFENCES tab in the AeroScope dashboard
- Click "Create Zone" and enter a name (e.g., "Airport Perimeter")
- Select zone type. Circle or Polygon
- Define the boundary. For circles: enter center coordinates and radius. For polygons: define vertex coordinates
- Save and activate. The zone appears on the map overlay immediately
- Monitor events. Alerts appear in the ALERTS tab and via WebSocket in real-time
Real-World Use Cases
Airport security
Monitor a 5 NM perimeter around an airport. Get ENTRY alerts for all aircraft approaching, with elevated threat scoring for low-altitude, non-standard approaches.
Stadium/event security
Create a no-fly zone around major events. Detect drones and unauthorized aircraft. Combine with UAV detection for comprehensive airspace protection.
Military base perimeter
Monitor restricted airspace around military installations. Track all civilian aircraft entering the zone and flag military patterns (orbits, racetracks).
Critical infrastructure
Power plants, government buildings, data centers. Set small geofences with tight DWELL thresholds to detect surveillance or loitering aircraft.
Border monitoring
Create long polygon zones along borders or coastlines. Track cross-border flights and unusual low-altitude activity.
Research zones
Define study areas for academic research, count transits, measure traffic density, collect data for specific geographic regions.
What's Included in Each Alert
A geofence event isn't just a boundary crossing: the alert carries the same enrichment we apply everywhere else: the aircraft's registration and type, military flag, integrity-warning flag, drone score, route-deviation flag, and the 0–100 composite threat score. That way you can quickly tell whether the aircraft that just entered your zone is a scheduled airliner on its normal approach or something genuinely unusual.
Look-Ahead Alerts
For aircraft with stable heading and speed, we project a short dead-reckoned path a few seconds ahead and check whether that path intersects your zone boundary. When it does, we emit a "projected entry" alert tagged separately from actual boundary crossings, typically with 10–60 seconds of lead time. Useful for prep; not a guarantee, because aircraft turn.
Why Some Alerts Are Quiet
If an aircraft is well within its own historical pattern (a scheduled flight on its usual approach to a nearby airport), we tag the alert as routine and you can choose to suppress those. If it's outside that pattern (an unusual altitude, an unusual time of day, a callsign we haven't seen before), it's flagged as worth a look. The decision is rule-based and visible in the alert payload.
Geofence events can also trigger webhook deliveries to external systems (Slack, Discord, Teams, Telegram, or custom HTTP endpoints).