UK Airspace Design Service (UKADS)

The UK Airspace Design Service (UKADS) is a single guiding mind to coordinate and sponsor future airspace changes to deliver the holistic, modernised airspace design envisaged by our Airspace Modernisation Strategy.

• Modernisation of UK airspace is essential to ensure that it is fit for purpose in the future, as envisaged by the CAA’s Airspace Modernisation Strategy published in January 2023. Modernisation will benefit UK consumers through greater system capacity and better resilience to disruption. Crucially, it will help UK aviation to achieve net zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.
• Unlike in most other countries, UK airspace design is today delivered via a model where multiple organisations, usually airports and air navigation service providers, each individually sponsor and fund airspace change proposals, often with interdependent designs. Despite a collective will to deliver, using this model to deliver airspace modernisation appears increasingly unworkable, particularly for the complex airspace around London. This puts at risk the realisation of the benefits of modernisation, including accommodating increasing demand for access to UK airspace and, eventually, innovative new technologies such as remotely piloted aircraft systems (drones).
• Following consultation, the Department for Transport (DfT) and CAA have decided to replace this model with a single guiding mind responsible for future airspace design – a UK Airspace Design Service (UKADS) – to deliver this much-needed modernisation at scale and to the timescales required.
• UKADS will be provided by NATS (En Route) plc (NERL), which currently provides air traffic control services for the ‘en route’ phase of flight. DfT and CAA are working with NERL with the shared ambition for the UKADS to be up and running by the end of 2025.
• UKADS will initially focus on modernising the complex airspace around London. Subject to its capability and capacity, DfT and CAA may expand its scope in the future.
• We are also reforming the way that airspace change is funded:
  • NERL’s work on the UKADS will be funded through a new Airspace Design Charge on airspace users, similar to the ‘en route’ charge those users currently pay.
  • This charge will also support a new Airspace Design Support Fund, which we expect to be administered by NERL. Eligible airport sponsors of airspace modernisation in other parts of the UK (i.e. outside the initial scope of the UKADS) can claim back relevant costs from the fund.
• Before NERL can commence providing the UKADS, and in order to introduce the funding reforms, the government is laying new Statutory Instruments and the CAA is consulting on proposed modifications to NERL’s air traffic services licence.
• Furthermore, by September 2025, the DfT and CAA will consult on a package of regulatory changes to facilitate the UKADS’s work. There are also potential opportunities to go further in streamlining airspace regulatory processes more generally. The package is likely to include the CAP 1616 airspace change process, the airspace change masterplan and the government’s Air Navigation Guidance and Air Navigation Directions.
• If there is anything else you need to know, check our UKADS key topics page or email us at airspace.modernisation@caa.co.uk.