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Cranfield Airport chosen for trial area to advance UAS integration within the UK.
by DRONELIFE Staff Author Walker Robinson
Cranfield Airport has been chosen by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to take part in a Temporary Reserved Area (TRA) Regulatory Sandbox which is able to integrate manned and unmanned aircrafts in the identical airspace. The TRA Sandbox is a component of the CAA’s Airspace Modernization Technique to enable and advance the adoption of UAVs, amongst other advanced tech, into the UK’s airspace.
Cranfield Airport is situated in Bedfordshire, England, just 50 miles north of London and is owned by Cranfield University. The University is recognized for its world-renowned aerospace program with over seven many years of aircraft research and design. They now look towards the longer term to explore what recent capabilities might be achieved through the technological advancements of the last decade in each manned and unmanned aircrafts.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), a multinational accounting firm, estimates that the UAV industry within the UK may grow to contribute £45 billion to the UK economy, with 900,000 drones in operation by 2030. For this to be realized, there have to be exhaustive efforts to soundly integrate unmanned aircrafts into the present aerospace industry, and this begins with the Airspace Modernization Strategy laid out by the CAA.
Cranfield Airport Operations Director Rob Abbott said, “The airspace of the longer term will likely be increasingly complex. The TRA Sandbox is a transparent indication of the CAA’s support for innovation and seeks to deal with the necessity 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 enhance industry knowledge, processes and systems. This is significant to unlocking the potential of economic drone use, and safely bringing UAS aircraft into shared airspace.”
Cranfield Airport expects that quite a few industry partners will take part in projects and live demonstrations of UAV and manned aircraft integration. This will likely be performed under the recommendation and guidance of the CAA, and their results will likely be a blueprint for regulatory guidelines that the CAA will enact.
Rob Abbott continued, “The approach we’re taking to integrate, based on established ATS services, builds on years of experience at Cranfield. Cranfield’s Global Research Airport, operated by one among the world’s leading universities in aviation, is uniquely in a position to bring together the airport, air traffic control and operations for truly collaborative research and development.