New Civil Engineer
Thomas Johnson
24 September 2025
The UK’s attempts to modernise its airspace for the first time in almost 75 years is facing delays and uncertainty while risks “remain high”.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is cosponsoring the “most significant” redesign of UK airspace with the Department for Transport (DfT), has come clean that the programme is not heading in the direction expected in its recent progress report.
The Airspace Modernisation – Progress Report has outlined how the programme is currently facing delays following a lack of “available funding or resource required to progress to the timescales required”.
In the current delivery model of the redesign, the sponsors of airspace change in the masterplan programme are funding their own airspace change proposals. This is causing problems to the programme as “each sponsor of the airspace changes within that cluster of the airspace change masterplan may not have the available funding or resource required to progress”.
The report continues: “There is insufficient resource or funding to modernise at the pace, and to the required standards, to meet the timelines expected by the government and stakeholders.”
