Law Commission consultation on aviation autonomy

Overview

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

The Civil Aviation Authority (“CAA”), and the Department for Transport have asked the Law Commission to review the UK’s regulatory framework to prepare the UK for autonomy in aviation. This project forms part of, and has been partly funded by, the UK Research and Innovation Future Flight Challenge. For more information about this project, click here.

The focus of this consultation is reforms that will enable autonomous and remotely piloted flight to take place safely, lawfully, and with appropriate legal mechanisms for attributing criminal and civil liability when things go wrong.

The consultation questions are drawn from our consultation paper published as part of a review of aviation autonomy. 

We recommend that consultees read the consultation paper, which can be found on our website:

https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/aviation-autonomy/.

A shorter summary and overview is also available on the same page. 

We are committed to providing accessible publications. If you require this consultation paper to be made available in a different format please email aviationautonomy@lawcommission.gov.uk.

How to respond:

Consultees do not need to answer all the questions if they are only interested in some aspects of the consultation.

Responses to our consultation questions can be in any format and do not need to be submitted via this online platform. However, we recommend using this online platform because it assists us to efficiently compile your answers. To begin answering the consultation questions online, click on the button at the bottom of this page.

If you wish to respond as a group using Citizen Space, please follow the instructions below.

1. Click ‘go to the consultation questions’.
2. Fill in the details of one person in your group. Please indicate that you are responding as a group.
3. Scroll down and click ‘save and come back later’.
4. Enter your email address.
5. You will be sent an email with a link. Circulate this email within your group. Anyone who has the link will be able to edit the responses.
6. Do not click submit until everyone in the group has entered their response. Once you have clicked submit, you will not be able to edit your response. Instead, click ‘save and come back later’.
7. When everyone has entered their responses, click submit.

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 Law Commission papers, including personal information. For example, we may publish an extract of your response in Law Commission publications, or publish the response in its entirety. We may also share any responses received with Government. Additionally, we may be required to disclose the information, such as in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. If you want information that you provide to be treated as confidential please contact us first, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic disclaimer generated by your IT system will not be regarded as binding on the Law Commission. The Law Commission will process your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force in May 2018.

For more information about how we use and handle data please see our Privacy Notice.

Any queries about the contents of this Privacy Notice can be directed to: general.enquiries@lawcommission.gov.uk.