I am a FAA certified Part 107 commercial pilot. Using LAANC I've been able to obtain approval for what is considered a Restricted zone or airspace within close proximity to a major airport. Looking at the B4UFLY app you can see that my proposed area of flight was 0' max altitude. That being the case, I could still submit an automated LAANC request, but it goes into pending status for manual (ATC) review. I just recently did this for the first time and was surprised that it took only two business days to get approval, but I planned for days that were further out (the earliest flight date being a little over a week from my submission date). LAANC will state that they target a turnaround time of less than 30 days, but that it could take up to 90 days, so I wasn't sure I'd get any or all of my three flight dates approved given they were all within a <30-day window, so I was quite pleased with the manual review response being as quick as it was.
Now, per my DJI drone, just because I got the LAANC approval it did not mean that I could fly my
Mini 2 on those approved dates in the restricted zones or airspace (they also showed up as red Restricted zones in the DJI Fly app). I had to go to DJI's
Custom Unlock website and submit all three FAA approvals (marking out the zone on the map, adding dates, times, etc.). I use the Aloft app (Free, not Enterprise account), so I had to take a screenshot (PNG image files) of the approvals on my iPhone combining them also with the FAA approval emails I got (printed to PDF file format) and also uploaded each set relevant to each FAA approval to each of the three separate DJI custom unlock requests, I was going after. I possibly could have gotten by with either of the PDF or the PNG file, instead of both, but I was being extra judicious as it was the first time I was doing this. I figure that more information is better and more likely to get approval. DJI also gave me the impression that because of my type of submission, that it could take more time as well. However, DJI approved each in minutes, if not seconds. It didn't take long at all. After that, I could then import them into my
Mini 2 setup. Now that I've been through the entire process, it really wasn't all that bad. You just need to plan ahead appropriately. I can't really offer any guarantee that your approval timelines will be similar to my own. It probably depends on airport and backlog of requests.
The only time it goes to manual review when using LAANC is when you are asking for altitude permission above what is specified for your proposed flight zone. In my case it was 0' max altitude. Hence, the required manual review. If it had been 200' max altitude for my flight zone and I only needed 200' max altitude per my request, it would be approved by LAANC normally in seconds (automated approval).