Our Strategy

1. Strategic Aims

• We regulate, enable and hold the aviation and aerospace sectors to account for high standards of safety, security, and consumer protection.
• We support consumers by ensuring they receive choice, value, and fair treatment. Consumers benefit from a vibrant and competitive industry, and we use our powers and influence to take appropriate action.
• We constantly seek proportionate and improved ways of achieving our regulatory aims.
• We provide accurate and timely information and support to government, parliament and stakeholders.
• We exemplify Just Culture.

2. Context

Delivering our core regulatory functions is our most important responsibility. Across safety, security, space, and consumer protection, we take independent regulatory decisions to uphold high standards for the benefit of consumers and the public.

The sector has changed significantly since our previous strategy in 2021, as has its risk profile. While aviation demand has recovered close to its 2019 levels, the pandemic introduced structural issues that are still being felt. We saw massive flight disruption in Spring 2022 due to resilience issues in all parts of the aviation sector, and continue to see these issues. This has had a particularly large impact on consumers, while requiring us to oversee safety as issues unfold.

We have since published our Consumer Strategy, and are working with Government to seek new powers to better protect consumers.

Our responsibilities have also changed, and in July 2021, we took on the regulation of space flight. We will continue to support the UK space industry as it gears up for further launches from UK spaceports.

3. Annual Strategic Objectives

• Deliver CAA-focused recommendations from the independent review into the NATS technical IT failure and drive industry engagement with full set.
• Reform CAA legislative frameworks to enable more flexible, agile regulation.
• Embed the State Safety Objectives into our work and promote collaboration to achieve them.
• Improve industry compliance with passenger rights during delays and cancellations and ensure they effectively communicate with consumers.
• Ensure appropriate regulation of Heathrow including the delivery of H8 price control and support for Heathrow expansion to protect consumers and users.
• Enhance our aviation security regulation with technology and data.

4. Considerations and Interdependencies

• Our ability to ensure safe outcomes across aviation and aerospace requires access to clean airspace.
• The proposed new consumer protection powers will be dependent on The Government’s legislative priorities.
• Our remit, and the privately owned nature of aviation means that we can’t aways fix issues directly, and the onus should be on industry, who are best placed to deal with some problems.
• We often only have a partial picture of what is going on and are reliant on those we oversee to provide us with the relevant information.

1. Strategic Aims

• We create an environment for new aviation and aerospace entrants, travel products and services to be brought to market.
• We co-sponsor and set direction for the modernisation of UK airspace to deliver access, efficiency, and environmental sustainability benefits and safely enable new users.
• We understand the future aviation ecosystem and the pace of change, to prepare to support the introduction of new technologies and business models.
• We focus our actions to support economic growth.

2. Context

Since publishing our previous strategy, aviation demand has largely recovered from the pandemic. We have therefore adjusted our focus to put a greater priority on supporting economic growth, and helping industry to innovate and continue to grow against the transformational challenges that face the industry over the next 30 years.

The pace of change in the innovation space continues unbounded. Some technologies, such as drones are transitioning from test and development towards demonstration and scale, while others have increased in prominence – for instance, the role of Artificial Intelligence and autonomy.

The culture has also changed at the institutional level, and there is real intent to deliver. For example, within the CAA we have delivered our drones registration portal (DMARES), expanded our Horizon Scanning function, and are working collaboratively with DfT to establish the ‘Future of Flight’ Programme.

3. Annual Strategic Objectives

• Produce accessible regulatory pathways to enable Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operation of RPAS.
• Produce accessible regulatory pathways to enable commercial piloted eVTOL operations.
• Implement UK ADS to progress delivery of airspace modernisation.

4. Considerations and Interdependencies

• We need to be mindful of the potential negative environmental impacts of both growth and innovation in our work. There are significant linkages to the ‘Supporting aviation to improve environmental sustainability’ focus area, particularly around the role of hydrogen. The work we do on this will be influenced by the government’s approach to Jet Zero and the Jet Zero Taskforce.
• Given the international nature of innovation in aviation, the willingness of other countries to collaborate and share knowledge will influence what we do and present new opportunities for collaboration.

1. Strategic Aims

• We are seen as a trusted and reliable partner who people choose to work with, and we share our regulatory expertise widely and continually learn from others.
• We work with a range of partners, to support the improvement of aviation and aerospace worldwide.
• We continue to ensure that the UK’s aviation interests are represented globally.

2. Context

Aviation and aerospace face a wide range of challenges over the coming years, from the significant national and global targets set for decarbonisation, to the rapid introduction of new technologies and fast-paced innovation. All bringing a new set of issues for regulators when balancing these needs and maintaining safety standards. International collaboration has never been more important - building trust, working together, and sharing our expertise and knowledge to achieve our common goals.

Having effectively repositioned ourselves as a world leading independent aviation and aerospace regulator since leaving the EASA system, we remain committed to maintaining our position as an internationally respected and influential regulator.

We will continue working to secure improved outcomes for consumers, supporting the growth of the industry, and playing our part in supporting the Government’s wider global agenda.

3. Annual Strategic Objectives

• Define and deliver our ambitions for the ICAO General Assembly.

4. Considerations and Interdependencies

• As an aviation regulator working in an international context, there will be interdependencies across all our international engagement: The DfT International Strategy heavily informs our engagement; our strategies on Sustainability, Consumers, and Innovation all emphasise the role of engaging with other countries; delivery of CAAi’s strategy strengthens regional influence.
• Work with our subsidiary organisation, CAAi, to design and deliver services that support the delivery of our strategic aims.
• Our engagement with other countries is dependent on both the UK Government steer, other countries willingness to engage on certain issues, and broader geopolitical relations between countries.

1. Strategic Aims

• We enable industry to improve its sustainability performance by encouraging and incentivising the sector to manage and reduce its negative impacts.
• We enable new, more environmentally friendly technologies to be safely introduced.
• We provide transparent information about aviation’s sustainability performance.

2. Context

We published our Sustainability Strategy in 2021. Since then, we have built our environmental sustainability team, drawn in certain ICAAN functions and produced outputs related to that, and set up the Environmental Sustainability Panel in the CAA to support and challenge us.

Over the same period, the external landscape has changed. The world is much further ahead on zero emission flight and new tech. However, this progress has not been taken for granted, and sustainability and net zero remains a major focus of governments and economies worldwide as we face an unprecedented climate emergency.

With the foundations now in place, we are in a position to develop our sustainability work further, building our capabilities, and continue taking on new environmental functions. We expect to update and refresh our Sustainability Strategy this year.

3. Annual Strategic Objectives

• Develop regulations to safely enable hydrogen- powered flight.
• Enable greater accountability through enhanced environmental information.

4. Considerations and Interdependencies

• Aviation sustainability is a global issue. We are one player in the space, dependent on strong relationships, others’ delivery and policy direction around specific issues.
• Similarly, climate change and delivering Net Zero is a system challenge. We will participate in the Regulators-Government Forum that was set up following a recommendation from the Skidmore Review and which will use system thinking to map the cross-sectoral pathways required to reach net zero.
• We will explore evolving thinking to understand how we can consider sustainability beyond the CAA's existing remit in areas where aviation has an environmental impact.

1. Strategic Aims

• We live our values, support and develop our people, and create a culture of learning and growth.
• We continually improve our services.
• We deliver overall value for money in our activities.
• We structure our operating model and build our capabilities to efficiently and effectively deliver our strategy.

2. Context

The pace of change around us continues to accelerate, and our work remains central to the Department of Transport, especially as we build up our post-EU rulemaking functions and gain new powers to protect consumers.

We know some of our current services can have a poor customer experience, which has large impacts – from cost to industry of time-consuming processes, loss of revenue while waiting for approval, consequences on willingness to cooperate and share information, and the resource cost we carry of handling queries, complaints, and reworks. We need to ensure we have the right people and capabilities, and the right processes and systems, so we are able to be agile and adaptive while delivering on these priorities and meeting our strategic ambitions.

3. Annual Strategic Objectives

• Improve customer experience of our People Licencing Systems for Commercial Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers.
• Embed our CAA competencies and develop leadership competencies, job families and career pathways.
• Develop a framework to ensure the CAA is financially and operationally sustainable.

4. Considerations and Interdependencies

• The challenging economic environment, and our Public Bodies Review of the CAA commitment to not raise charges above CPI(H)-1% for the 3 years starting in 23/24 directly impacts how much revenue we collect and the costs of doing business. This will require us to carefully manage resources and prioritise to ensure we can modernise our systems and processes, attract and retain people with the experience, and fund building our new capabilities.
• Government in February 2025 published an updated Framework Document for the CAA, meeting a recommendation from the 2023 Public Body Review of the CAA. This includes a commitment that CAA will follow Managing Public Money guidance alongside other changes to enhance oversight, transparency and accountability to Parliament.