An autonomous emergency flight management system may find safe and clear landing sites for unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in emergency situations. Emergency flight management software may reside on an onboard computing system. The computing system may continuously look at internal databases and input from other systems (e.g., a global positioning system (GPS), camera, compass, radar, sonar, etc.), depending on what is available. The emergency flight management system may make decisions on its own without human intervention. For instance, a database may provide some local likely candidates for landing sites. Information associated with the candidates may include latitude, longitude, altitude for top of a building, etc. Position updates may be continuously provided from an autopilot or other suitable system.