Six projects have been selected for trials under a new UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) scheme that will test drone use in deliveries, inspections of infrastructure, emergency services and flights to remote locations.
The regulator has chosen the trials to take place that will help safely integrate drones flying beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) of their operator into UK airspace. These BVLOS flights will use advanced technologies for navigation, control and to detect other aircraft.
The trials will gather key safety data, such as how drones detect and avoid other aircraft, the electronic signals they can send to be able to be visible to other airspace users and air traffic control. This will support the regulator’s ongoing development of policy and regulations so that drone flights can be fully integrated with other airspace users.
Sophie O’Sullivan, Director of Future of Flight at the UK Civil Aviation Authority, said: “These innovative trials mark a significant step forward in integrating drones safely into UK airspace. By supporting projects ranging from consumer deliveries to critical infrastructure inspections, we are gathering essential data to shape future policies and regulations. Our goal is to make drone operations beyond visual line of sight a safe and everyday reality, contributing to the modernisation of UK airspace and the incorporation of new technology into our skies.”
The CAA invited organisations to bid to participate in an innovation sandbox to validate and test their concepts, supporting the development of BVLOS capabilities. The BVLOS sandbox is part of a collaboration with UK Research and Innovation that is supporting the creation of the aviation ecosystem needed to accelerate the introduction of advanced air mobility (AAM), drones, and electric sub-regional aircraft in the UK.
The CAA says that further permissions will be needed before trials are able to begin.
The projects included in the trial are:
Amazon Prime Air
- Prime Air is a delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get small packages to customers in less than an hour using drones.
Airspection
- The Airspection – Scalable Offshore Wind Project aims to provide safe and reliable drone services for remote infrastructure. Accessing offshore wind turbines is currently a major challenge for the industry. Supported by an offshore wind developer, this project aims to develop scalable BVLOS drone operations for offshore wind farms to enhance safety, reliability and environmental impact. The project will be trialled at an offshore wind farm and will serve as the foundation for remote drone services in this industry, reducing the need for vessels, minimising carbon emissions, and supporting the expansion of the UK offshore energy industry.
NPAS
- In 2021, the National Police Air Service established its Futures & Innovation Team. The team’s objectives were to investigate BVLOS capabilities and its potential adoption as part of a blended fleet. NPAS’s ambition is to remotely fly an uncrewed aircraft, over a six month period, in an environment that is representative of where NPAS crewed aircraft would be tasked. It will look to test, and verify, not only the payload capabilities, but also validate the onboard detect and avoid capabilities.
NATS
- NATS Services will be working with the CAA, Flylogix and wider partners to enable a project over the North Sea, allowing it to introduce and evaluate its early BVLOS approval services, which it hopes will support and encourage the development of BVLOS operations across the UK.
Project SATE
- The Sustainable Aviation Test Environment (SATE) intends to develop a trial airspace test environment, the Trial Orkney Test Zone, and will test integrated manned and unmanned aircraft operations from Kirkwall Airport. The test zone will be specifically designed to enable a wide range of uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) platforms to conduct BVLOS trials and operations in unsegregated Class G airspace. It will demonstrate the feasibility of operating a drone Hub-and-Spoke route network within unsegregated airspace based on integrated operations from Kirkwall airport (the hub) to the Orkney Island Council airfields and other use cases located across the Orkney archipelago.
- Consortium partner Highland and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL) will lead the project in conjunction with fellow partner Windracers.
Project Lifeline