Last week the CAA announced the latest round of ‘BVLOS Sandbox’ projects, all chosen to help push us one step closer to realising routine drone operations in the UK.

The last four years have been a fast, furious R&D journey which started when a project called Future Flight Challenge dropped onto my desk. Since then, alongside innovative industry partners who are also part of advancing future flight in the UK, we have been helping to prepare the airspace and airports for a new generation of users.

Future Flight 1 and 2 helped us to understand how new eVTOLS and drones move, operate and perform. Phase 3 of Future Flight will move us to the next stage, showing us how new airspace users could interact with existing air traffic, at airports and in a shared airspace. 

We’ve come a long way since the days when our main association with wind farm developers was to object to their developments because of the impact they had on our radar navigation and communications infrastructure.

If you’re a member of the General Aviation community, you can’t help but have noticed that over the summer NATS announced some important changes to the AFPEx service.