Part 107 UAS instructor reported they were given LAANC approval for the flight. There was no overlay of the approved airspace and the UAS crew was unsure if they remained in approved airspace for the entire flight.

Narrative

On this mission I was both the VO and effectively an instructor - overseeing and instructing a newly certified Part 107 operator on his first major client site mission. Our goal was to gather flood elevation data to the NE; E; and SE of the facility. We were operating 2.4NM to the SE of MVN. We were monitoring the CTAF and did observe radio traffic throughout the day. We were also following targets that were transmitting ADS/B information on ForeFlight. No traffic was ever in our area nor was there a need to take evasive actions throughout the day. We were also cognizant that there could be traffic that would not be transmitting ADS/B or communicating on CTAF. None was observed. Prior to this the only flight time the operator had was for self-practice/proficiency as outlined in our extensive Flight Operations guide. Actual flight times are estimates. It is worth noting that in the proficiency section of our Flight Ops manual; most maneuvers are based on stick flying while all our client site operations are executed using programmed missions. Stick flying is reserved for emergency procedures. The location that we were flying was subject of a 100 ft. and 0 ft. LAANC restriction. We submitted several LAANC approval requests for varying altitudes in the weeks leading up to the mission. We received numerous rejections because we had hoped to fly at 350 ft. in a large area around the facility. We entered several requests until we were granted approvals for 250 ft. & 200 ft. elevations in a much-reduced area. Since we were flying near MVN; we varied the altitude along with the lateral boundaries of the missions as best the online interfaces would allow us. The problem we ran into was a combination of the poor user interface on the controllers when it comes to programming the flight path; the LAANC approval forms in Aloft; and the open loop communications with the FSDO - the later of which causes the drone operators to submit multiple requests with no feedback as to why requests are being rejected and; more importantly; what would be an acceptable altitude/GEO location. The above seemingly minor independent annoyances combined in the field to result in a lack of situational awareness as to exact lateral and elevation boundaries were in effect for a given region. This was exasperated by the small screen provided in the controller and the fact that the LAANC approval information is not integrated into the display. As a result; there were times we were unsure if we were exceeding the regions were we had approval. The fact that some information resided on our laptops; some in text messages on our phones and little useful information on our drone display (where a majority of our focus was centered) gave us few options for cross-checks.