Civil Aviation Authority Annual Progress Report

Thursday 31st October 2024 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Kane)]

The airspace modernisation strategy refresh, published on 23 January 2023, sets out, through nine elements, the ways and means of modernising airspace, focusing on the period until the end of 2040.

The Civil Aviation Authority must report to the Secretary of State annually on the delivery of the AMS, through an annual progress report. This report details the progress made by industry, as well as work the CAA have conducted against each of the AMS’s elements. For 2022, the progress report reports on the previous AMS’s 15 initiatives.

In total, six of the 15 initiatives are assessed as “requiring attention”, two are on track, one has been implemented and six initiatives have been assessed as having “major issues”.

The Department is working with the CAA to strengthen delivery and ensure greater progress is made in implementing the airspace modernisation programme. Ministers are giving the programme urgent attention and have already announced measures to tackle these challenges, including the consultation launched on 22 October on our plans to create a new UK Airspace Design Service. This will drive forward airspace modernisation and create a system fit for the future by delivering quicker routes, easing delays, and reducing harmful emissions.

Areas of progress

Free route airspace (initiative 2) was implemented in Scotland in 2021 and remains on track for deployment in Q1 2023 across south-west England and Wales. This will see airlines being able to fly more direct routes in upper airspace, reducing aviation’s carbon emissions, and will save 12,000 tonnes of CO2 a year—equivalent to the power used by some 3,500 family homes.

The airspace classification review (initiative 10) has made significant progress with the publication of the findings into the review of the Cotswold region. This work has identified where airspace can be opened up for all airspace users to use (e.g. general aviation).

Under the deployment of electronic surveillance solution (initiative 11), the Department for Transport and the CAA established the Surveillance Standards Task Force, developing national, voluntary specifications for electronic conspicuity. This is a key enabler in the refreshed AMS, bringing together current and new airspace users, such as drones, in order to promote a safe and integrated lower airspace.

Areas assessed as having major issues

There are a number of initiatives assessed as having “major issues”, in part because of covid-19 recovery and the complexities of the airspace changes in the London cluster. However, formal acceptance of the Airspace Change Organising Group’s masterplan iteration 2 in January 2022 was a critical milestone. This was enabled in part by £9.2 million Government funding. Iteration 3 will be published later this year following a number of public engagement exercises.

Of the six initiatives requiring attention, timescales and delivery plans have been reassessed and re-baselined as a result of publication of the refreshed AMS.

I will place a copy of the airspace modernisation strategy 2023 progress report in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS177]