The bar is written down — and it's beatable
The FAA keeps a national database of obstructions — towers, cranes, buildings, trees — called the Digital Obstacle File. Every obstacle in it carries a grade for how precisely its position and height are known. The best grade the system can express, code 1A, allows a tolerance of ±20 feet horizontally and ±3 feet vertically.
Part 77 Inspection records positions two ways. On its own, the iPhone's satellite positioning is good enough for screening work. Paired with an off-the-shelf survey receiver — an RTK rover ("real-time kinematic," a standard surveying technique that corrects satellite positioning in real time) — the app records positions to about an inch.
Source: the FAA's published accuracy codes for its obstacle database — Digital Obstacle File documentation (FAA).
The FAA already trusts good data
This isn't a bet on some future policy change. The regulatory system already vests trust in submitted records in its everyday workflows:
Obstruction studies are desk studies. When someone proposes a tower or crane near an airport, the FAA evaluates it from submitted, surveyor-certified data — it does not routinely visit the site. Trust rides on the attested record, including the as-built confirmation filed after construction (FAA desk reference).
Machines already stand in for a daily human check. Obstruction lights on towers are supposed to be checked every 24 hours — and the FAA's own guidance accepts a properly maintained automatic monitor in place of a person looking at the light. The entire tower industry runs on that allowance.
The inspection work is already delegated. Daily airfield inspections at commercial airports are performed by trained airport staff — the FAA audits the records (14 CFR 139.327) — and state agencies inspect general-aviation airports on the FAA's behalf on multi-year cycles.
The pattern is consistent: when data is good and its failure modes are managed, the system trusts attested records rather than sending another pair of eyes.
What that could mean down the road
None of this replaces an inspector, and none of it is this app's call to make. What a consistently accurate, tamper-evident field record could reasonably support — always at each agency's discretion — is less windshield time: follow-up checks reviewed and signed off remotely, and eventually longer intervals between physical visits for well-documented, low-risk sites, backed by a continuous record instead of a years-old snapshot.