21 December 2016
The UK government is coming under increasing pressure to redesign Britain’s increasingly complicated and outdated airspace.
The Sky’s The Limit lobbying group, which includes airlines, airports and NATS, has warned of major flight delays unless widespread changes can be made to UK airspace.
And the Royal Aeronautical Society has just published a paper which says UK airspace is no longer fit-for-purpose. The RAeS paper, Improving the UK’s Airspace, recommends that the Government use its forthcoming airspace modernisation consultation to develop a national airspace strategy that sets out which objectives should be prioritised so as to allow the implementation of improvements required to deliver a modern system.
Research by NATS has shown that delays are set to rise from around 90,000 minutes a year today to 4 million by 2030 unless the UK’s ageing network of airspace structures and flight paths is redesigned to make use of modern aircraft technology.
The Sky’s the Limit group is calling on the government and politicians to support the changes that it describes as urgent and necessary.
Without redesigning the UK’s network of flight paths and airways, it is feared that it simply won’t cope with the growth in traffic forecast over the coming years, with 3.1 million flights a year expected in the UK by 2030, up from 2 million flights in 2015.
Martin Rolfe, NATS Chief Executive Officer, said, “A thriving aviation industry that connects us to the rest of the world has never been more important, but this problem is an existential threat to both the industry’s health and the wider health of UK plc.”
Much of the UK’s controlled airspace was designed in the 1960 and 1970s for a different era of aircraft and when traffic was less than half of what it is today. The Sky’s The Limit also wants changes in navigation systems away from ground-based beacons to satellite navigation (ie, GPS).
Many in General Aviation also feel that the way lower airspace has been patched together is largely responsible for the rise in airspace busts – something that CAA officials privately agree with.
The CAA has set out a plan to modernise airspace in its Future Airspace Strategy.
http://theskysthelimit.aero/
