Public Funding for Heathrow Airport Limited

A consortium led by Rolls-Royce, including Cranfield University, easyJet, Heathrow Airport, MTC, Reaction Engines, UCL and University of Oxford is developing gas-turbine control system technologies that will enable aircraft engines to operate on liquid hydrogen. The UK government has a 10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, and Jet Zero which pushes forward sustainable air travel is one of its goals. Similarly, the Aerospace Technology Institute has called on the UK aviation industry to prioritise sustainability and lead action on environmental imperatives. Transition to alternative energy sources to today's kerosene is regarded as one of the technology priorities, and hydrogen is one fuel that could power aircraft in the coming 10-15 years. Particularly, development of a hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine combustion system has been identified as a key enabler for zero carbon emission flight, as gas turbine powered aircraft currently account for 96% of today's aviation carbon emissions. Achieving this vision is far from easy. Despite the advantage of being a very clean fuel, producing almost pure water as an exhaust product, hydrogen unfortunately has a very low energy density compared to kerosene, meaning that the fuel will have to be in the form of a cryogenic liquid to enable aircraft to fly any appreciable distance. The extremely low temperature of liquid hydrogen, -253 °C, is an incredibly harsh environment for the engine components, and many technological challenges will have to be overcome to produce a hydrogen-powered gas turbine that has the same exacting requirements of quality, performance, reliability and safety as today's engines. The project, named LH2GT will develop the technologies to control and transport the fuel from the aircraft's liquid hydrogen fuel tank to the engine combustor, including cryogenic pumping, fuel metering, system thermal management, intelligent control systems and component life optimisation. Additionally, LH2GT will carry out a techno-economic analysis of the impact of the introduction of the technology to help inform component design requirements. The technology developed here will be equally applicable to fuel cell as well as gas turbine powered aircraft, which opens the possibility of further improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency in the future. Over a timescale of three years, the project will culminate in a working demonstration of the fuel system. This exciting project is jointly funded through contribution from the project partners and UK government agencies, BEIS, Innovate UK and ATI.

This ambitious 2-year project will develop, evaluate, standardise and operationally deploy the world's first fully automated Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) to conduct 24/7 commercial UAS operations in one of the busiest airports in the world, London Heathrow. The High intensity Autonomous Drone Operations project (HADO) will create a scalable technical and regulatory enterprise that will dramatically accelerate the commercial roll out of autonomous UAS in high intensity environments across the UK. The HADO project is being delivered by a collaboration between Operational Solutions Ltd (as the lead partner), Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd, Cranfield University, Rinicom Intelligent Solutions Ltd, HeroTech8 Ltd, Carmenta Technologies Ltd, the National Physical Laboratory, Dynamic Intelligence Solutions Ltd, Thales UK, UAVTEK Production Ltd, Ocuair, the National Air Traffic Service, NexusNine, UAVTEK Ltd, Bird & Bird LLP, Cranfield Airport, Defence Scientific Technology Laboratory, Airports Council International, Virgin Atlantic Airline and Star Alliance Airline. The project will develop and rollout a set of requirements, operating procedures, an operating safety cases and tools that will enable drones to operate autonomously in a mixed traffic environment and in the vicinity of manned aircraft within a controlled airspace. It will conduct a 4-month evaluation of BVLOS UAV operating at Heathrow airport. This will include missions that transit into and out of the Heathrow perimeter. Under the direction of the National Physics Laboratory and Cranfield University the HADO project will also develop the first set of testable standards that spans the entire HADO enterprise, including the testing of AI and autonomous decision-making modules, in order to support regulatory approvals and to inform future legislation. HADO will also demonstrate how innovative technology can be combined with conventional methods to address the societal implications of autonomous drone operations in urban environments such as Heathrow.

This ambitious 2-year project will develop, evaluate, standardise and operationally deploy the world's first fully automated Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) to conduct 24/7 commercial UAS operations in one of the busiest airports in the world, London Heathrow. The High intensity Autonomous Drone Operations project (HADO) will create a scalable technical and regulatory enterprise that will dramatically accelerate the commercial roll out of autonomous UAS in high intensity environments across the UK. The HADO project is being delivered by a collaboration between Operational Solutions Ltd (as the lead partner), Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd, Cranfield University, Rinicom Intelligent Solutions Ltd, HeroTech8 Ltd, Carmenta Technologies Ltd, the National Physical Laboratory, Dynamic Intelligence Solutions Ltd, Thales UK, UAVTEK Production Ltd, Ocuair, the National Air Traffic Service, NexusNine, UAVTEK Ltd, Bird & Bird LLP, Cranfield Airport, Defence Scientific Technology Laboratory, Airports Council International, Virgin Atlantic Airline and Star Alliance Airline. The project will develop and rollout a set of requirements, operating procedures, an operating safety cases and tools that will enable drones to operate autonomously in a mixed traffic environment and in the vicinity of manned aircraft within a controlled airspace. It will conduct a 4-month evaluation of BVLOS UAV operating at Heathrow airport. This will include missions that transit into and out of the Heathrow perimeter. Under the direction of the National Physics Laboratory and Cranfield University the HADO project will also develop the first set of testable standards that spans the entire HADO enterprise, including the testing of AI and autonomous decision-making modules, in order to support regulatory approvals and to inform future legislation. HADO will also demonstrate how innovative technology can be combined with conventional methods to address the societal implications of autonomous drone operations in urban environments such as Heathrow.

The world faces two pressing challenges. Congestion in cities, the lifeblood of national economies, is rising to unacceptable levels. This causes poor health outcomes and strangles economic growth. At the same time, humanity must confront the threat of climate change and reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. The Advanced Mobility Ecosystem Consortium (AMEC) is aiming to demonstrate the commercial and operational viability of Advanced Aerial Mobility (AAM) in the UK. This is an efficient, electric mode of aerial transport complementary to existing transport infrastructure, helping to deliver both increased connectivity and net zero emission targets. In doing so we will deliver cost-effective and convenient inter-regional and intra-regional travel to the British public. AMEC will demonstrate three first-of-kind air mobility services using Vertical Aerospace's emission-free VA-X4 eVTOL aircraft, operated by Virgin Atlantic. The first mission will take place between Bristol Airport and South-West node. The second will take place between Heathrow Airport and Skyports' Elstree vertiport. A third will digitally simulate a mission between Bristol Airport and London City Airport. These missions will explore and prove all aspects of the passenger journey, vehicle operation, airspace navigation, ground charging, security provision and local stakeholder management. Various technologies and methods are being proven. Vertical Aerospace is exploring novel means of compliance with civil aviation regulators as it prepares an airworthy vehicle for demonstration. Skyports is building a "living lab" vertiport at Elstree Airport to allow UK AAM stakeholders to trial technologies and operational concepts, facilitating commercial operations. Atkins and Skyports are deploying innovative digital infrastructure to modernise airspace and ensure compliance with national aviation safety regulations and border security. The consortium also involves the cooperation of world-leading public and academic institutions that are bringing their expertise to enable an economically viable AAM ecosystem. Cranfield are undertaking vertiport network and scheduling optimisation. Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) are developing open hardware and software standards for rapid eVTOL charging solutions that are essential to achieve fast turnarounds and high aircraft utilisation. Connected Places Catapult will manage delivery of the project and address, from a neutral perspective, the many public acceptance challenges surrounding the introduction of AAM services. The potential benefits to the UK are vast. Greater convenience for the travelling British public, substantial export earnings from the domestic manufacture of aircraft with associated products and services, enhanced connectivity driving GDP multiplier effects and levelling-up opportunities, and fewer harmful emissions.

The world faces two pressing challenges. Congestion in cities, the lifeblood of national economies, is rising to unacceptable levels. This causes poor health outcomes and strangles economic growth. At the same time, humanity must confront the threat of climate change and reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. The Advanced Mobility Ecosystem Consortium (AMEC) is aiming to demonstrate the commercial and operational viability of Advanced Aerial Mobility (AAM) in the UK. This is an efficient, electric mode of aerial transport complementary to existing transport infrastructure, helping to deliver both increased connectivity and net zero emission targets. In doing so we will deliver cost-effective and convenient inter-regional and intra-regional travel to the British public. AMEC will demonstrate three first-of-kind air mobility services using Vertical Aerospace's emission-free VA-X4 eVTOL aircraft, operated by Virgin Atlantic. The first mission will take place between Bristol Airport and South-West node. The second will take place between Heathrow Airport and Skyports' Elstree vertiport. A third will digitally simulate a mission between Bristol Airport and London City Airport. These missions will explore and prove all aspects of the passenger journey, vehicle operation, airspace navigation, ground charging, security provision and local stakeholder management. Various technologies and methods are being proven. Vertical Aerospace is exploring novel means of compliance with civil aviation regulators as it prepares an airworthy vehicle for demonstration. Skyports is building a "living lab" vertiport at Elstree Airport to allow UK AAM stakeholders to trial technologies and operational concepts, facilitating commercial operations. Atkins and Skyports are deploying innovative digital infrastructure to modernise airspace and ensure compliance with national aviation safety regulations and border security. The consortium also involves the cooperation of world-leading public and academic institutions that are bringing their expertise to enable an economically viable AAM ecosystem. Cranfield are undertaking vertiport network and scheduling optimisation. Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) are developing open hardware and software standards for rapid eVTOL charging solutions that are essential to achieve fast turnarounds and high aircraft utilisation. Connected Places Catapult will manage delivery of the project and address, from a neutral perspective, the many public acceptance challenges surrounding the introduction of AAM services. The potential benefits to the UK are vast. Greater convenience for the travelling British public, substantial export earnings from the domestic manufacture of aircraft with associated products and services, enhanced connectivity driving GDP multiplier effects and levelling-up opportunities, and fewer harmful emissions.

CIRIAS - Critical Infrastructure Resilience Integrated Aviation System -- is a programme to develop an integrated end-to-end 'system of systems' to enable unmanned drones to fly long range missions Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), with the aim of sustaining critical UK infrastructure. The threats of climate change, economic uncertainty, and more recently a global pandemic, present risks to the health, well-being, and security of the UK population. CIRIAS is designed to minimise these risks by increasing the reliability of the infrastructure required to sustain our society, enabling planes to fly, trains to run, roads to remain available, and facilities to operate. Developed by a team comprising large global companies, major asset owners and operators, niche technology specialists, and leading consultants and academics, our project will develop all the elements of a system that will: * automate the inspection and monitoring of the condition of roads, railways, and airports. * rapidly respond to unplanned incidents to restore infrastructure to operational readiness. * make critical deliveries of essential products and services regardless of traffic conditions. These elements comprise: * A statement of work and trade study that identifies the appropriate UAS platforms to employ and integrate into our system of systems in order to most effectively achieve the use case goals that were identified. * A design and architecture of a system of systems that includes the advanced avionics, communications, and navigation systems to support safe, collision-free beyond visual line of sight drone operations. * A system used to plan, test, and simulate drone missions to enable stakeholder engagement and the gaining of regulatory approvals. * An integrated changeable payload capability to enable precision data capture from the air, as well as delivery and collection of critical payloads. * Automated data processing and analysis capability to derive maximum value from every data acquisition mission * A system for control of operational airspace below 400 feet to enable mission planning and compliance in increasingly crowded airspace. * A tactile stakeholder management system to gain social acceptance of all proposed missions. The integration of these elements will be demonstrated through key commercially viable missions to inspect the condition of critical infrastructure and respond to defects or incidents at a global hub airport and on a national railway network, as well as making critical deliveries to public health facilities. This integrated capability will contribute to keeping Britain moving, protecting the health of the nation and keeping workplaces operational. The learning from the development of this project will also be used to inform the greater commercialisation of low-level airspace to support more flexible and sustainable public transport and delivery services.

Fly2Plan - _Enabling a new model aviation data system-of-systems_ seeks to develop a new model for aviation data exchange to allow new entrants in urban air mobility and autonomous operations to participate. By researching the use of modern and emerging internet technologies of public cloud infrastructure and distributed ledger technology, the decentralised operating models built over generations of pioneering aviation discovery can be preserved, whilst transforming operating resilience and costs for the community. Fly2Plan directly addresses the following themes: * ATM&UTM: Fly2Plan vision is to develop a set of open-source Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technologies and platform that underpin all aspects of airport, ATM, UTM, flight and UAV operations based on distributed ledger technology such as Blockchain. * Digital Infrastructure: solution for the transformation of legacy systems into agile, on-cloud interoperable platforms, to enable secure plug-and-play interactions between partners in the ecosystem. * Digital Communication Systems: as digital data and voice communication systems mature in the ATC environment, a natural evolution to more data traffic and less voice will occur. Fy2Plan offers the tools in order to enable this transformation. * Viable, challenging, use cases: a variety of users will benefit from Fly2Plan technology: drone operators, traffic controllers, UTM platform providers, ANSPs, airlines, airports, military, baggage handling providers, ground handling providers... As part of this, end users are represented within the consortium and the rest have been approached during proposal preparation to gather their insights and needs and will be part of WP5 conversations to refine use cases. There are several of them already being considered: 1. Flight Plan and Operation of Autonomous UAV BVLOS in non-segregated air space 2. New Capacity Model definition, with headroom quantified 3. Trajectories management, enabling fuel burn reduction in stacks and rewarding excellence in planning. 4. Vehicle technologies enablement -- autonomous flight (UAVs, eVTOLs, automated aircraft,...) will not happen if there is no provision of data such as flight data (FIXM), aeronautical info (AIXM) and weather (WIXM) from an open, reliable system-of-systems as the one Fly2Plan will develop. The Consortium is well balanced and formed by thirteen partners from across multiple sectors and disciplines. Within these partners, big corporates, start-ups and research institutions are included: * Operations: Heathrow Airport, IAG, Consortiq, Altitude Angel, Cranfield University, NATS * Technology: SITA, IBS, Snowflake Software, TEKTowr, Rockport Software * Research: Oxford University, Cranfield University * Product Management Office: Digital Catapult. The project is divided into five costed 'Industrial research' work packages. * WP1 -- Product Design and Project Management * WP2 -- Governance model definition * WP3 -- Development of the new open-source DLT platform\] * WP4 -- Trust Assurance Mechanisms * WP5 -- Communication, IPR strategy and Phase III preparation The project has obtained letters of support from relevant stakeholders as: Eurocontrol, ACI, UAE GCAA, Gatwick Airport, Microsoft and the Industry Resilience Group interested in the value Fly2Plan could unlock for them and want to monitor the progress of the project. The project has a total duration of 15 months and total cost of £4,670,932, where partners are co-funding 51%.

**Project NAPKIN - New Aviation, Propulsion, Knowledge and Innovation Network** **NAPKIN is** **developing** **the blueprint for a UK sustainable aviation system supporting the UK's leadership** **position in aviation innovation and action on climate change and directly addressing its need for rapid, affordable** **and** **sustainable regional connectivity.** Our high quality UK consortium draws on existing knowledge and expertise to deliver this timely project which will help to pave the way for low and zero carbon domestic and short haul aviation this decade. Moving towards a sustainable aviation system requires transformative change and coordinated action. NAPKIN uses a '5As' model of the aviation ecosystem - integrating Air passengers, Airports, Aircraft, Airspace, and Airlines - building a comprehensive picture of the conditions that will enable the transition to regional electric and sustainable aviation and the landscape of future products, services and infrastructure. Cranfield Aerospace (via project Fresson), GKN and Rolls-Royce (via Fresson, Efan-X, Accel etc) have developed electric aircraft conceptual designs. Cranfield University, University College London and the University of Southampton bring deep expertise and sophisticated modelling, complemented with input from Deloitte. Heathrow Airport, Highland and Island Airports and London City Airport bring the different contexts and ground operational experience to demonstrate viability across the UK. An airline focus group brings the project to life guiding the project with a clear pathway to a commercial reality. A model of affordable domestic sustainable aviation has the potential to solve carbon, connectivity and commercial challenges together. We believe that regional and sub-regional sustainable flight presents the necessary an economic and environmental opportunity the UK must grasp with urgency.

To develop and deploy a new Prevention and Appraisal Methodology and associated Dashboard which will increase construction project success rate and reduce in-project and post-project quality issues.

The London Hydrogen Network Expansion (LHNE) project will create the UK’s first end-to-end, integrated, green hydrogen production, distribution and retailing system, centred around a fully publically accessible, state-of-the-art 700 bar renewable H2 refuelling station network across London, servicing Europe’s largest urban fleet of H2 vehicles. This project represents an essential next step for the UK to make the transition from limited scope individual demonstration projects to genuine commercial rollout of H2 vehicles and infrastructure. London is the natural region to lead this transition, with its position as a global city with a large urban population and its existing H2 vehicle deployments. The timing of LHNE is an ideal fit with the early results from the UKH2Mobility study, which are likely to suggest London as an early deployment region for attracting OEM vehicles for their next stage of pre- and commercial rollout in the 2014-2020 timeframe.