To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 10 January 2019 to Question 205973 on Airports: Unmanned Air Vehicles, what consultations the Government undertook prior to implementing the 400 ft height and 1 km radius exclusion zone on the use of drones adjacent to airports.
Answered on
17 January 2019
From December 2016 – March 2017 the Department sought views on drones in our consultation “Unlocking the UK's High Tech Economy: Consultation on the Safe Use of drones in the UK”. Almost 700 responses were received, including from airports, airlines, GA pilots and drone users. The Department’s response to that consultation (July 2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/benefits-of-drones-to-the-uk-economy) sets out its intention to ban the use of drones within a certain distance of airports and to ban flights above 400ft. Amendments to the Air Navigation Order (ANO 2016) were then made in May 2018 introducing the 400ft limit and the interim 1km airport restriction.
Following the Department’s most recent public consultation, the Government will now amend the ANO to extend the 1km restriction to protect the aerodrome traffic zones of protected airports, and to add 5km long runway protection zones at the end of each runway. This was set out on 7 January 2019 in the Government Response to “Taking Flight: The Future of Drones in the UK”.