Law Commission consultation on uncrewed aircraft systems traffic management ("UTM")

Overview

This is a public consultation by the Law Commission for England and Wales. 

The Law Commission has been asked by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Department for Transport (DfT) to review the law around highly automated and autonomous flight. The three-year review is partly funded by UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) through the Future Flight Challenge. For more information about this project, please visit our web page.

In February 2024, we published a consultation paper which looked at the law relating to drones and vertical take-off and landing aircraft.  

We have now opened a consultation on our second consultation paper which focuses on the provision of air traffic management and air navigation services (ATM/ANS) to uncrewed aircraft. To operate safely in integrated airspace, uncrewed aircraft will require some form of ATM/ANS, which we refer to as uncrewed aircraft systems traffic management (“UTM”). In our consultation paper we make provisional proposals about how UTM should be regulated, and about the legal mechanisms for establishing liability when things go wrong. 

Consultees are encouraged to review the full consultation paper or its summary. Consultees do not need to answer all the questions if they are only interested in some aspects of the consultation. Familiarity with the first paper (CP1) may provide helpful context.

Once you have completed your consultation response, we would be grateful if you could complete a short, anonymous survey to help us understand the characteristics of individuals and organisations who have responded. Your answers will be held and analysed separately to your consultation response. The link is here.

About the Law Commission: The Law Commission is a statutory body, created by the Law Commissions Act 1965 (“the 1965 Act”) for the purpose of promoting the reform of the law. It is an advisory Non Departmental Public Body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). The Law Commission is independent of Government. For more information about the Law Commission please click here.

Responses to this consultation: We may publish or disclose information you provide us in response to this consultation, including personal information. For more information on how we consult and how we may use responses to the consultation, please see page ii of the consultation paper. For information about how we handle your personal data, please see our privacy statement.