Correspondence

DfT and CAA update on airspace modernisation: March 2021

Updated 19 March 2021

The Department for Transport (DfT) and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), as co-sponsors of airspace modernisation, released a statement in July last year confirming a continued commitment to airspace modernisation and the need to consider how individual organisations may progress airspace change in response to the Airspace Change Organising Group’s (ACOG’s) report on Remobilising the Airspace Change Programme.

We immediately accepted 3 of ACOG’s recommendations (1, 2 and 4), and the DfT and CAA committed to thoroughly consider the remaining recommendations in further detail.

One of ACOG’s recommendations was to consider financial support for the future airspace strategy implementation (FASI) initiatives of the CAA’s Airspace Modernisation Strategy (AMS).

We are pleased to announce that we will be providing funding to enable FASI airspace change sponsors through a grant administrated by the CAA. This will enable sponsors to continue through Stage 2 of the airspace change process (ACP) known as CAP1616 as part of the government’s commitment to supporting restart in the aviation sector and decarbonisation.

We have considered ACOG’s remaining recommendations as follows:

Recommendation 3

That ACOG and National Air Traffic Services (NATS) re-evaluate the programme deployment plan to ensure that the airport-led and network ACPs are aligned and can be incorporated into iteration 2 of the masterplan

We agree that it is fundamental for the programme for both airport sponsor and network ACPs to be aligned in order for them to be incorporated in the next iteration of the masterplan.

Recommendation 5

That ACOG examines options for external financial support for delivering the programme objectives and, if appropriate, the potential options for accessing and managing funds

The DfT have now announced a funding support package for the FASI programme that will support the airport airspace CAA CAP1616 process.

Recommendation 6

That ACOG, the airport ACP sponsors and NATS assess how best to achieve the airspace emissions savings contribution set out in the Sustainable Aviation Decarbonisation Roadmap (PDF, 2.5MB)

We welcome ACOG’s commitment to sustainability, and encourage them to work with airport ACP sponsors and NATS to assess how they can achieve airspace emissions savings.

Recommendation 7

That ACOG work with general aviation and unmanned aircraft system stakeholders to explore the options for the programme to ensure their needs and requirements are collectively coordinated with ACP sponsors, potentially leveraging additional funding support from UK Research and Innovation via the future flight challenge

We agree that it is important that the airspace modernisation masterplan process is used as an opportunity to open up airspace for all users, including general aviation and new types of aircraft such as drones.

Recommendation 8

That ACOG gather stakeholder feedback in the form of a lessons-learned exercise to help inform any process improvements associated with the application of the CAP1616 guidance

We agree with this recommendation and encourage stakeholders to engage with ACOG on this lessons-learned exercise.

Recommendation 9

That the CAA consider producing detailed guidance on the treatment of trade-off decisions for airspace design when one objective (for example, sustainability) has more weighting than others (such as noise mitigation or capacity)

We agree that a number of trade-off decisions will potentially need to be made, and these will be consulted on by ACOG in due course. However, the DfT, who are responsible for aviation-related policy, will not be able to provide detailed guidance that will cover all potential trade-off decisions. Each decision should fully take into account the individual circumstances and relevant policies at the time.

Recommendation 10

That ACOG ensures ACPs below 7,000ft progress coherently with plans to remobilise operations and enhance network performance via NATS En Route Limited’s (NERL’s) engagement with the EUROCONTROL Network Management Transition Plan (PDF, 21.6MB) and Operational Excellence Programme

We agree that alignment between airport ACPs, and plans to remobilise operations and enhance network performance is important.

We look forward to working with ACOG and the airspace change sponsors to make crucial progress on the FASI AMS initiatives.

Robert Courts MP, Minister for Aviation

Richard Moriarty, Chief Executive, Civil Aviation Authority