The UK Civil Aviation Authority has chosen Cranfield Airport to test the operation of unmanned and manned aircraft in unsegregated airspace.
The airport will be designated a Temporary Reserved Area (TRA) Regulatory Sandbox to allow it to host projects and trials that will help to integrate unmanned aircraft such as drones into shared airspace.
The TRA Sandbox forms part of the Airspace Modernisation Strategy which outlines a roadmap for the development and modernisation of UK airspace. The Cranfield Airport TRA is agnostic to technology and market definitions, and will facilitate an open access trials environment managed by Cranfield’s air traffic control.
Rob Abbott, airport operations director, commented, “The airspace of the future will be increasingly complex. The TRA Sandbox is a clear indication of the CAA’s support for innovation and seeks to address the need to progress adoption of manned and unmanned aircraft in UK Airspace. I’m pleased that Cranfield Airport with this TRA Sandbox will host more groundbreaking projects and trials to improve industry knowledge, processes and systems. This is vital to unlocking the potential of commercial drone use, and safely bringing UAS aircraft into shared airspace.”
The new TRA will allow the airport to host projects that demonstrate and validate technologies, airspace management procedures and flight operation procedures that support the safe, efficient and managed integration of drone operations and crewed aircraft. Live testing of operations and technologies will provide safety mitigation evidence and help to establish standards, enabling the CAA to develop regulatory guidance.
The airport already expects several consortiums and industry partners to use the TRA, including Project Blueprint which will be using the TRA Sandbox to create a beyond visual line of sight test environment, with a low-cost ground-based test and avoid network.
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