UK CAA Choose EASA over FAA For Future Safety Certification Standards

The UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) has con­firmed it will put in place the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards used by the Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA), known as Spe­cial Con­di­tions (SC)-VTOL, as the basis for UK accep­tance for eVTOL air­craft. This after the U.S Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) has recent­ly stat­ed its own cer­ti­fi­ca­tion rules are to be mod­i­fied, where some say, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for eVTOL com­pa­nies to gain full recog­ni­tion.

Spe­cial Con­di­tions allows the CAA and eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ers to devel­op safe­ty lev­els estab­lished under SC.VTOL that pro­vide “strin­gent lev­els of pro­tec­tion” for the UK pub­lic, both in the air and on the ground.

While imple­ment­ing these new stan­dards, this still allows the CAA to con­tin­ue proac­tive­ly engag­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er world avi­a­tion author­i­ties, such as the FAA, to share approach­es, lessons learned and safe­ty insights.

Rob Bish­ton, CAAs Group Direc­tor for safe­ty and air­space reg­u­la­tion, com­ment­ed, “The deci­sion to adopt SC-VTOL as our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis will sup­port UK man­u­fac­tur­ers and enable them to eas­i­ly access the glob­al mar­ket for eVTOL air­craft.” He con­tin­ued, “We will con­tin­ue to work with the indus­try to help pro­mote and facil­i­tate inno­va­tion through­out avi­a­tion.”

Stephen Fitz­patrick

Har­mon­is­ing safe­ty stan­dards across nations and con­ti­nents helps to main­tain high lev­els of safe­ty, as well as reduc­ing indus­try costs and “avoid­ing dupli­ca­tion of effort.” By work­ing togeth­er the UK indus­try has eas­i­er access to the wider glob­al mar­ket.

UK-based Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, a lead­ing British eVTOL com­pa­ny, wel­comes the CAA’s announce­ment as it con­tin­ues to sup­port Vertical’s con­cur­rent CAA and EASA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its VX‑4 air­craft.

Stephen Fitz­patrick, Ver­ti­cal’s Founder and CEO, com­ment­ed, “We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our work with the CAA to make eVTOLs safe for all con­sumers and bring the VX‑4 to the skies.” And Michael Cer­ven­ka, the com­pa­ny Pres­i­dent, added, “The CAA’s con­fir­ma­tion is a piv­otal step.”

Ver­ti­cal believes that CAA’s deci­sion to adopt (SC)-VTOL as the UKs cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis will sup­port glob­al mar­ket access and enable swift val­i­da­tion of Ver­ti­cal’s VX‑4 air­craft world­wide. The com­pa­ny expects to reach sev­er­al crit­i­cal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion mile­stones in the com­ing months, as the air­craft’s test flight pro­gram begins this Sum­mer.