Eve Air Mobility completes ConOps for airspace integration of Urban Air Mobility in the UK

Eve Air Mobil­i­ty has com­plet­ed the Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (CONOPS) for air­space inte­gra­tion of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in the UK, which was a case study look­ing at trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers between Heathrow Air­port and Lon­don City Air­port.

Led by Eve, the UK Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium con­sists of NATS, Heathrow Air­port, Lon­don City Air­port, Sky­ports, Ate­ch, Volo­copter, and Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, in part­ner­ship with the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) Inno­va­tion Hub through its Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box.

The first major mile­stone from the project was the com­pi­la­tion of a base­line describ­ing key reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges which need to be addressed to enable safe, effi­cient, and scal­able zero-emis­sion UAM oper­a­tions, result­ing in the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Pub­li­ca­tion 2272. 

Andre Stein, co-CEO of Eve said: “This CONOPS focus­es pri­mar­i­ly on the solu­tions nec­es­sary for near-term chal­lenges that could impact ini­tial com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. 

“The Lon­don use case and CONOPS pro­vide a tan­gi­ble exam­ple for the CAA to bet­ter under­stand the aims of UAM and sup­port the devel­op­ment of future reg­u­la­tions accord­ing­ly.”

In Jan­u­ary 2021, the con­sor­tium was select­ed by the CAA to join the Sand­box on its Future Air Mobil­i­ty Chal­lenge to devel­op a strate­gic frame­work that will define the low-lev­el air­space designs, pro­ce­dures, and infra­struc­ture for safe­ly inte­grat­ing new types of UAM oper­a­tions across the UK.

The CAA’s Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box offers organ­i­sa­tions or con­sor­tia the oppor­tu­ni­ty to test and tri­al the via­bil­i­ty of their inno­v­a­tive solu­tions, while also help­ing the reg­u­la­tor shape future reg­u­la­tions in line with nov­el tech­nolo­gies and con­cepts. 

The con­sor­tium used this base­line to iden­ti­fy which areas to focus on in order to ensure the pro­posed con­cepts con­sid­er the cri­te­ria pre­vi­ous­ly aligned with the reg­u­la­tor. 

The con­sor­tium fol­lowed a rig­or­ous process to devel­op the con­cepts, includ­ing inter­ac­tive reviews from the CAA Inno­va­tion Hub and a com­pre­hen­sive range of its sub­ject mat­ter experts, incor­po­rat­ing their feed­back into the final doc­u­ment. 

It also lever­aged quan­ti­ta­tive data derived from com­put­er mod­el­ling sim­u­la­tions to sup­port its pro­posed con­cepts, as well as a series of stake­hold­er engage­ment activ­i­ties to bet­ter under­stand stake­hold­er con­cerns and needs relat­ed to UAM oper­a­tions.

Fred­er­ic Laugere, UK CAA Inno­va­tion Ser­vices Lead, said: “The infra­struc­ture required to sup­port the future imple­men­ta­tion of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) will be sig­nif­i­cant and a key ele­ment for the suc­cess of this new sec­tor. 

“The sig­nif­i­cant detail in this report and its real-world sce­nario means it paves the way to make UAM a real­i­ty.”

You can read the full ConOps doc­u­ment by click­ing here.