ARPAS-UK was one of the stakeholders involved in the co-design of the Future of Flight Action Plan and we support it. We have a collective roadmap that will help us shape the industry and take it to the next stage. It is the result of reasonable compromise among the parties, and now it is up to all of us to help deliver, step-by-step, in an iterative process.

Quite a lot of attention is focussed on the passenger carrying aircraft, also referred to as Advanced Air Mobility. The first milestone will be the demonstration for the first time in the UK of an eVTOL, piloted, in 2026.

Anne-Lise Scaillierez, CEO of ARPAS-UK, was interviewed on Sky News on the 18th, and a few questions were raised on that topic, as well as the need for vertiports.

You can access ARPAS-UK CEO’s interview on Sky News Here.

Now, the most important next step from our perspective is to deliver the first incremental milestones. For UAS, these are:

• 2024: Demonstration o BVLOS UAS operations in non-segregated airspace, as part of the CAA sandbox programme and the Future of Flight programme
• 2027: Routine BVLOS UAS operations in integrated airspace at scale.

In the interim, we support the introduction of the Atypical Air Environment policy. It is an incremental step to facilitate BVLOS operations in lower risk environment, where no another aircraft is expected to be, for example just above assets that are inspected. These will already unlock a lot of economic value, and help the industry accumulate experience and flying hours in BVLOS.

You can access The DfT publication here.