AEF response to CAP1616 consultation: Local community voices need to be heard in the airspace change process

9th December, 2025

AEF and ANCF have responded to the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) consultation on proposed changes to its airspace change policy document CAP 1616. The proposed modifications aim to incorporate the role of the new UK Airspace Design Service into the document, remove supposed barriers to airspace change proposals (ACP) being sponsored, and to accelerate progress once proposals are in the system.

AEF is concerned that the proposals do not give communities enough of a say in how new flight paths will be designed, especially the proposed removal of key opportunities for communities to feed-in their comments. 

Specifically, the unacceptable loss of key ACP stages, including the removal of Gateways 1 and 2 and replacing them with “milestone checks” (Proposal 1), would mean losing key assurances that the ACP sponsor has met the airspace change process requirements.

The CAA proposes to reduce community engagement opportunities throughout the process, but in particular by removing reference to 12 weeks as the accepted standard length for permanent airspace change consultations (Proposal 10). We have said that this presents a backward step and that it is not in line with the Government’s 2018 Consultation Principles.

See also our responses to Proposals 3 – 9, 11 and to Proposal 15 which seeks to replace the post implementation review with less rigorous oversight of airspace performance. These proposals would, variously, weaken community engagement, transparency of process and the CAA’s regulatory role.

You can access the CAA’s consultation preamble and document here.

The CAA asks that responses are submitted online, and the deadline for responses is December 18th 2025.