UK CAA publishes new safety insights to guide future eVTOL regulation
Electric Take-Off and Landing aircraft (eVTOLs) are being developed by a mixture of
start-ups and traditional aviators and are testing the frontier of battery technology for
inter-city and regional flight in the coming years. They promise to be quieter with
potentially lower operational costs than traditional rotorcraft, bringing the opportunity
to undertake significantly higher volumes of journeys, unlocking the economic and
social benefits associated with improved connectivity. This futuristic model for aviation
is known as Advanced Air Mobility.
To successfully launch electric vertical flight services, new ground infrastructure needs
to be developed, and the airspace infrastructure reimagined to cope with additional
traffic. CAA and the Department for Transport are enabling this through the Airspace
Modernisation Strategy explained in CAP1711.
Creating a new form of transport will naturally bring unforeseen risks between various
actors in the aviation system. Before services can start, we need to pre-empt these
risks and either seek to remove them or minimise their likelihood. This is the rationale
behind the work we, working with the eVTOL Safety Leadership Group, commissioned
Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) to undertake through this System Theoretic
Process Analysis (STPA) of eVTOL operations.
