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The head of the UK’s aviation regulator has called for the creation of a global common standard for flying taxis, as he forecast that air travel was on the brink of a “new revolution”.
Sir Stephen Hillier, chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, said the travel industry is at an “inflection point” and needs global co-operation ahead of the “widespread” adoption of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) designed to carry passengers on short trips.
His comments come after UK airspace struggled to cope with conventional passenger jets during a summer of delays compounded by the failure of the country’s air traffic control system over the August bank holiday, which grounded hundreds of aircraft and delayed thousands of passengers.
The CAA has launched an investigation into the outage, which Hillier said would look at the “systemic issues” raised by the failure at the operator, National Air Traffic Services, the resilience of air traffic control and the modernisation of UK airspace.
But he added that it was right to prepare to regulate new technologies, which will force the UK’s already dated airspace to adapt to new forms of air travel.
“The lessons [of the Nats failure] . . . will help inform how we take forward aerospace modernisation,” he said.
Investors around the world have committed billions of dollars to the dream of “urban air mobility” but it has taken longer than expected for flying taxis to become a reality, with companies struggling to overcome technical and operational challenges.
The next 18 months will be critical for the industry as several start-ups accelerate their test programmes in the hope of receiving certification for their vehicles from as early as next year. Germany’s Volocopter wants to be the first to fly commercially in Europe as early as next summer, in time for the Paris Olympics.
The UK government has set a target date of 2026 for having a craft licensed, but Hillier rejected concerns from some in the aviation industry that the UK is falling behind.
The CAA aimed to provide a regulatory environment that “encourages, enables, enhances innovation” to help the UK seize the “market opportunity” arising from the anticipated arrival of flying taxis, he said. Some analysts predict that the global market for eVTOLs could be worth as much as $1tn by 2040.
Hillier said regulators need to work together to ensure there is not “divergent regulation” which would “restrict the opportunities for operators”. “What is not helpful to any company really is that you can only licence your and fly your product in that country,” he said.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency is the only regulator to have published dedicated technical specifications for eVTOLs offering commercial services to passengers. Its standards assume relatively high flight volumes over urban areas and are based on those of large commercial jetliners, which mean there is the chance of just one catastrophic failure in 1bn flight hours.
The UK has adopted the same certification standards.
The US Federal Aviation Administration, meanwhile, has yet to specify its safety targets. The FAA said it and EASA “are working towards the equivalent level of safety”. “We rely on different mitigations to achieve this,” it added.
But some industry executives fear there could be regulatory divergence, which would undermine their ability to sell or operate their aircraft in different regions.
Trevor Woods, director of regulatory affairs at Vertical Aerospace, the Bristol-based flying taxi start-up, said companies are looking for “standardised” rules. “We are already seeing the gaps between regulatory approaches narrow as certification requirements become clearer,” he said.
Aside from the technical challenges involved in developing the vehicles, as well as the challenges around regulation, building infrastructure and gaining public acceptance, Hillier said he expected the new aircraft to become “widespread” in the coming decades.
“If we go outside at the moment and look up into the air, it’s mostly empty. And we will now have the technologies to make much more use of that environment than we have in the past,” he said.
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