UK CAA issues call to industry to join its new Vertiport Stakeholder Working Group to ensure safe air taxi operations

The UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) has issued a call for peo­ple to join its new Ver­ti­port Stake­hold­er Work­ing Group (VSWG), which will help facil­i­tate engage­ment, dis­cus­sion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­try stake­hold­ers.

The Future of Flight Action Plan aims to enable the demon­stra­tion of pilot­ed eVTOL flights in the UK in 2026 as a first step to scaled oper­a­tions and a sus­tain­able indus­try.

To achieve ini­tial, scaled, and sus­tain­able oper­a­tions, the CAA has deter­mined a num­ber of Imple­ment­ing Rules (IR), Approved Means of Com­pli­ance (AMC), Guid­ance Mate­r­i­al (GM) and oth­er doc­u­ments need to be con­sid­ered to enable safe oper­a­tions VTOL Capa­ble Air­craft.

To assist with this, a work­ing group com­prised of stake­hold­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from indus­try is being estab­lished. It will sup­port the CAA pol­i­cy teams and oth­er sub­ject mat­ter experts tasked with devel­op­ing pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­tion per­tain­ing to ver­ti­ports estab­lished at a loca­tion, oth­er than an exist­ing licensed or cer­tifi­cat­ed aero­drome.

The project com­pris­es four key ele­ments when devel­op­ing this new style of aero­drome, includ­ing: Ver­ti­port Design, Obsta­cle Lim­i­ta­tion Surfaces/ Vol­ume, Visu­al Aids and Res­cue and Fire­fight­ing Ser­vices (RFFS).

Oth­er areas of dis­cus­sions will include ver­ti­port licenc­ing, Safe­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tems (SMS) and emer­gency planning/emergency orders.

The CAA invites stake­hold­ers to reg­is­ter their inter­est in one (or more) areas:

• VCA Manufacturers/OEMs
• Future VCA oper­a­tors or oth­er AOC hold­ers, pro­fes­sion­al pilots, or oth­er ser­vice providers and pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions
• Ver­ti­port design­ers, oper­a­tors, or oth­er avi­a­tion pro­fes­sion­als with rel­e­vant exper­tise in aero­drome design, oper­a­tions, and reg­u­la­tion
• Safe­ty experts or oth­er avi­a­tion pro­fes­sion­als with rel­e­vant exper­tise in aero­drome oper­a­tions and reg­u­la­tions (includ­ing RFFS)
• Any stake­hold­er with a legit­i­mate inter­est in ver­ti­port design and oper­a­tions, who would like to par­tic­i­pate in this rule­mak­ing pro­gramme

The objec­tives of the VSWG are as fol­lows:

Engage­ment
Fos­ter open and con­struc­tive dia­logue between the CAA and exter­nal stake­hold­ers to exchange infor­ma­tion, share per­spec­tives, and address con­cerns relat­ed to the ver­ti­port rule­mak­ing project.

Dis­cus­sion
Seek input from stake­hold­ers to gath­er valu­able insights, exper­tise, and diverse view­points regard­ing the design, imple­men­ta­tion, and impact of the ver­ti­port rule­mak­ing project.

Col­lab­o­ra­tion
Facil­i­tate col­lab­o­ra­tion and coop­er­a­tion amongst stake­hold­ers to iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties, resolve chal­lenges, and devel­op prac­ti­cal solu­tions that meet the shared goals of enhanc­ing Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) capa­bil­i­ties out­side of the aero­drome envi­ron­ment.

Pro­pos­als and feed­back
Pro­vide pro­pos­als and deliv­er feed­back on spe­cif­ic aspects of the ver­ti­port rule­mak­ing project nec­es­sary for the imple­men­ta­tion of new reg­u­la­tions, chang­ing to exist­ing reg­u­la­tions and the devel­op­ment of indus­try guid­ance and best prac­tice.

The appli­ca­tion to join the VSWG clos­es on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 20th. For more infor­ma­tion, please click here.