20 December 2022
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Department for Transport (DfT) have issued a joint statement after a year of work by a special task force to identify the way forwards for Electronic Conspicuity in the UK.
The objective is to establish a national, voluntary standard for Electronic Conspicuity (EC) that would allow integration between piloted aircraft and unmanned aircraft, ie drones.
An independent aviation consultancy firm, Egis, has produced three reports over the past year exploring the options and developing a roadmap.
The preferred option is one labelled Option 3A which suggests adopting existing global standards for electronic conspicuity – operating on 1090 MHz for piloted aircraft and 978 Mhz for unpiloted aircraft – but only mandated in specified airspace volumes and remaining voluntary elsewhere.
Also considered was Option 5B: a general mandate for all airspace users to equip with regulated electronic conspicuity devices.
However, the Roadmap document concludes: “Rather than taking the step straight to a mandate (Option 5B) it is recommended that the intermediate step of Option 3A is implemented as the UK solution to electronic conspicuity. This option allows for the certainty of knowing what the end goal of implementation is to address the current and future electronic conspicuity goals.
“It is recommended that Option 3A be taken to Phase 2 of the study to further develop the concept of operations, information needs, architectures and high level safety and interoperability assessment within the context of current and future environments identifying what new requirements may be needed, indicative costs, and what regulatory changes (primary and secondary legislation) and policy would support an effective deployment of Option 3A.”
NOTE: FLYER is working on a more detailed analysis of the statement to follow shortly.
Link to the CAA/DfT’s full statement with links to the three reports:
