The UK Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) consultation on a decision-making process for PPR proposals will be closing on 7 July 2019. This gives you just a few more days to submit your comments
Last October the Government gave the CAA, as airspace regulator, a decision-making role for a wholly new category of airspace change. This category is known as a planned and permanent redistribution of air traffic through changes in air traffic control operational procedure, or PPR for short.
The Government had identified that while changes to airspace design are subject to the CAA’s airspace change process, and need to be consulted on, air traffic control procedural changes can be implemented without consultation, even where the noise impacts from the resulting shift in the distribution of aircraft are similar.
As a result, the CAA must introduce a new process for making these decisions by 1 November 2019. The purpose of this consultation is to seek your views on our proposals for this new process, which we have based on the existing CAP 1616 process used for proposed changes in airspace design.
Proposed PPR process
The consultation document describes the different stages of the proposed PPR process and the activities involved. The process begins with the air navigation service provider identifying whether an operational procedure change might qualify as a PPR and explaining why it is needed.
The air navigation service provider must then assess and compare the impacts of the options available to meet that need, consult those potentially affected about the option(s) chosen, and take feedback into account in any final proposal.
How to respond to this consultation
Please visit the dedicated consultation website https://consultations.caa.co.uk/
They are asking for comments before 7 July 2019. They cannot commit to take into account comments received after this date.
Please note that the consultation is about the proposed decision-making process, but not about the merits of the policy itself, which is a matter for the Government.
For more information please contact airspace.policy@caa.co.uk
