UK Civil Aviation Authority publishes considerations for aerodromes and vertiports planning to operate VTOL aircraft

The UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) is in the process of deter­min­ing the required tech­ni­cal and oper­a­tional require­ments to enable cur­rent licensed aero­dromes to accom­mo­date VTOL air­craft.

It has con­duct­ed a gap analy­sis between exist­ing UK reg­u­la­tions for licensed aero­dromes and heli­ports, and ver­ti­port guid­ance pub­lished by oth­er bod­ies such as the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA), the US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA), and Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (ICAO) Annex 14 Vol­ume II.

Gap analy­sis will deter­mine the most appro­pri­ate stan­dards to safe­ly accom­mo­date VTOL air­craft in the UK. The aim is to allow indus­try, gov­ern­ment, landown­ers, aero­dromes, and the CAA to lay the ground­work in advance of the tech­ni­cal require­ments being pub­lished in late 2024.

Sec­tion A of this doc­u­ment pro­vides a gen­er­al overview of the ini­tial stages of the aero­drome licens­ing process. Sec­tion B con­tains oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions for aero­drome licens­ing for VTOL oper­a­tions, divid­ed into roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties that the CAA, Local Gov­ern­ment, VTOL Oper­a­tors and OEMs or Aerodromes/Vertiports need to con­sid­er.

A ‘ver­ti­port’ will be defined as a sub­set of an ‘aero­drome’. The Air Nav­i­ga­tion Order 2016 requires that most UK flights for the pub­lic trans­port of pas­sen­gers take place at a licensed aero­drome or at a Gov­ern­ment aero­drome. Ver­ti­ports intend­ing to serve VTOL air­craft oper­a­tions for the pub­lic trans­port of pas­sen­gers may need a CAA licence.

‘CAP 168: Licens­ing of Aero­dromes’ sets out the stan­dards required at UK Nation­al licensed aero­dromes relat­ing to man­age­ment sys­tems, oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures, phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics, assess­ment and treat­ment of obsta­cles, visu­al aids, res­cue and fire-fight­ing ser­vices (RFFS) and med­ical ser­vices.

The gen­er­al process­es out­lined in CAP168 will apply to cur­rent aero­dromes accom­mo­dat­ing pub­lic trans­port, but specifics, rel­e­vant to VTOL oper­a­tions may dif­fer, for exam­ple fire­fight­ing and phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Aero­dromes with exist­ing licences may not need an addi­tion­al aero­drome licence but should con­sult with their Inspec­tor as to the addi­tion­al activ­i­ties they wish to under­take. The appli­cant should either be the own­er of the land or have obtained the landowner’s per­mis­sion for the use of the site as an aero­drome.

A pro­pos­al to use land as an aero­drome or ver­ti­port may be sub­ject to the require­ments of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Act and appli­cants are advised to con­sult the Local Plan­ning Author­i­ty before embark­ing on any such project. A licence will nor­mal­ly remain in force until sus­pend­ed or revoked but may also be issued for a lim­it­ed peri­od.

To read the report, please click here.