The present disclosure provides systems and methods for flight planning for an autonomous aerial vehicle. The systems and methods perform a processor executed process of receiving a request for flight planning and retrieving a model for the structure or the feature of interest from one or more databases. The request identifies a structure or a feature of interest to be surveyed by the autonomous aerial vehicle. The one or more databases include a database including models of terrain, airports and obstacles or a database including models of manufactured articles based on original equipment manufacturer (OEM) specifications or computer aided design (CAD) models. The process includes computing a flight plan that completely surveys the structure or completely surveys the feature of interest based on the retrieved model. The flight plan defines a search pattern with position values. The process includes uplinking the flight plan to the autonomous aerial vehicle.