Queen's Speech December 2019 - Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill

Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill

The purpose of the Bill is to:

• ●  Maintain the UK’s position as a world-leader in aviation, ensuring that regulations keep pace with new technology to support sustainable growth in a sector which directly provides over 230,000 jobs and contributes at least £22 billion to the UK economy every year.

• ●  Ensure that the police are able to tackle effectively the unlawful use of unmanned aircraft, including drones and model aircraft.

  The main benefits of the Bill would be:

  • ●  Making journeys quicker, quieter and cleaner through the modernisation of our airspace.

  • ●  Improving public safety through greater police enforcement powers, deterring the unlawful use of unmanned aircraft and ensuring that offenders are quickly dealt with in the appropriate manner.

    The main elements of the Bill are:

  • ●  New government powers to direct an airport or other relevant body to prepare and submit a proposal to the Civil Aviation Authority to modernise their airspace, enabling more efficient, quieter and greener flights.

  • ●  Modernising the licensing framework for air traffic control.

  • ●  New police powers to tackle the unlawful use of unmanned aircraft. These include the ability to require a person to land an unmanned aircraft and enhanced stop and search powers where particular unmanned aircraft related offences have taken place.

    Territorial extent and application

● The Bill's provisions would extend and apply to the whole of the UK. Civil aviation and airspace are reserved matters.

Key facts

● Many of the UK’s air routes and air traffic management practices were designed when commercial flight first became widespread in the 1950s, and for lower-

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powered, less efficient aircraft with far poorer safety, surveillance and control systems than now.

• ●  These 1950s flightpaths often constrain aircraft climb performance (by, for instance, requiring them to climb in stages rather than fly straight up) meaning that more time is taken to reach their optimum cruising altitude, more fuel is burned, more emissions and noise are created. Other practices include stacking, where aircraft circle in an airborne ‘queue’ to enter busy airports such as Heathrow. Such practices limit the number of flights the airspace can safely accommodate.

• ●  The Department for Transport’s Strategic Case for Airspace Modernisation, published in February 2017, set out that if nothing is done there could be a delay of 30 minutes for 1 in 3 flights by 2030, which would be 72 times higher than in 2015. This would cost the UK around £250 million per year. Modernisation can also deliver major noise and carbon reduction benefits.

• ●  The Civil Aviation Authority last year published an Airspace Modernisation Strategy, setting out general principles and methods. The next step is individual airports drawing up their own airspace modernisation plans.

• ●  The Bill will give the Secretary of State, or Civil Aviation Authority, a power to direct those involved in airspace change, for example airport operators, to progress an airspace change proposal, failing which they could be fined.

• ●  It will also hand the police powers to tackle the unlawful use of unmanned aircraft, including requiring a person to land an unmanned craft, and new stop and search powers.