Friday 17 July 2020

Dear AOA Member,

Today the Prime Minister held a Coronavirus press conference shifting the Government’s response from a national one to one of targeted local action. Government will aim to increase testing capacity to 500,000 per day by the end of October 2020. Work from home advice will be updated from 1 August, giving employers more discretion and asking them to make the decision about how their staff can best work safely. The Prime Minister expressed a desire for the country to return to normality by November, in time for Christmas. Unfortunately for our sector, I feel that a full return to normality might take quite a bit longer!

The Airspace Change Organising Group (ACOG) has today published its expected report, Remobilising the Airspace Change Programme which highlights the impact of COVID-19 on the current airspace modernisation programme and sets out key recommendations to remobilise the national programme of airspace change. It highlights that a shortage of funding and uncertainty surrounding the programme is putting at risk the national benefits that upgrading the UK’s airspace would deliver. In a joint statement by the Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority immediately accepted recommendations 1, 2 and 4 in the ACOG report and went onto the say they understood the impact of the pandemic on the sector and its ability to progress with modernisation, but asserted their continued commitment, as co-sponsors, to airspace modernisation.

Elsewhere, this morning it was revealed that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sustainable Aviation has written to the Chancellor to ask that Government subsidise the nascent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry to the tune of £500 million.

Have a lovely weekend.

Best wishes,

Karen Dee
Chief Executive