The Civil Aviation Authority is inviting industry, academia, and organisations to join its Regulatory Sandbox to test hydrogen technologies that support the use of hydrogen as an aviation fuel. The tests will identify hazards, risks, safety challenges and gaps in current CAA regulations and evaluate the proposed mitigations through verification and validation.

Our intention is that the hydrogen sandbox will enable appropriate stakeholders to test hydrogen technologies and show how the proposed mitigations will either comply with or close gaps in current CAA regulations. This outcome of testing will enable the proposal of recommendations to create new hydrogen policies.

The call is open to individual organisations or consortia working on developing and using hydrogen as an aviation fuel.

Context
To reach Net Zero flying by 2050, the aviation industry has been investing in developing hydrogen propulsion solutions that offer the potential for zero-carbon emission flights. However, hydrogen as an aviation fuel is at an early stage of development.

As a result, industry and the CAA do not yet have a comprehensive understanding of the risks to aviation safety; industry has not yet developed hydrogen-related standards; and the CAA has not yet published policies (e.g., acceptable means of compliance and guidance material) to certify aircraft and license aerodrome operations.

For industry, uncertainties about regulations are:

• A barrier to developing hydrogen as an aviation fuel.
• Attracting further funds for R&D.
• Setting up a business model.

The hydrogen sandbox proposes the testing of hydrogen technologies to gain test data to support the validation of proposed mitigations. This will enable the creation of required policies to facilitate the introduction of hydrogen in the aviation environment.

The full document can be downloaded here