The UK’s Future Aviation Industry Working Group (FWIAG) recently published a three-to-five-year manifesto regarding a strategic airspace integration plan it says could unlock the potential for more efficient air transportation. The "Let’s Get Flying: Our Plan For Action" document addresses how new aircraft, including eVTOL vehicles, could benefit from greater operational flexibility while not reducing access to existing airspace users. It also tackles how crewed and uncrewed aircraft can safely coexist and how to remove “the need for airspace users to understand and comply with an increased complexity of airspace that a segregated approach would cause.”
The plan, which is intended to support the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s wider airspace modernization strategy, lays out 18 sets of actions organized around three themes: accelerating speed to market, establishing economic models, and clarifying roles and responsibilities. These map out envisaged requirements to reshape regulations, standards, operating models, and infrastructure, as well as establish economic models for needs such as air traffic and flight information services, pilot training, "detect-and-avoid" technology, and airspace user charges.
Collectively, the new document is a response to the airspace integration “problem statement” detailed in "Future Airspace Integration: Leading the World," a paper published in August 2022. The FAIWG is part of UK Research and Innovation, which is a conduit for allocating joint government and industry funding for technology projects.
| 
