Civil Aviation Bill

The Bill is in pre-legislative scrutiny stage. The political baseline was set on 29 January 2025 when Secretary of State Heidi Alexander issued WMS HCWS397 inviting Heathrow to bring forward third-runway proposals and confirming Government support for sustainable aviation 12. That was followed on 27 February 2025 by WMS HCWS476 on the Gatwick Northern Way development consent 34 and, on 3 April 2025, by the grant of the London Luton Airport Expansion DCO 5. The CAA's UK Main National Aviation Safety Plan 2026-2029 (April 2026) 6 sits underneath these political signals as the regulator's delivery roadmap, alongside its Final Decision on NERL's licence modification to support the UK Airspace Design Service (March 2026) 7. The most material recent SI activity is the Aviation Safety (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/460), which came into force on 1 May 2026, de-criminalises contravention of SPA.ETOPS.100 and rewrites Article 71 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 to give the CAA broad discretion to grant exemptions — subject only to the Annex II essential requirements 8. The companion SI 2026/328 9 corrected the Luton DCO drafting (including new noise-contour exceedance carve-outs and arbitration routes). The Lords Bill introduced on 14 May 2026 names 'protection of purchasers and users of air transport and airport services' in its title 10, suggesting consumer protection is the lead strand.

In the last three months the regime has moved decisively from secondary-legislation reform into primary-legislation territory. SI 2026/460 was made on 27 April 2026 and entered force on 1 May 2026 1; the King's Speech named a Civil Aviation Bill on 13 May 2026 234; the Lords vehicle had First Reading on 14 May 2026 5; and the DfT targeted consultation on the aviation safety regulatory framework was live by 15 May 2026 6. Earlier in the window, the Luton DCO correction order (SI 2026/328) was made on 20 March 2026 7, and the SLSC reported on the draft aviation safety SI in its 54th Report on 12 March 2026 8. The Government Response to the Environmental Audit Committee's airport-expansion report appeared on 12 January 2026 9, followed by the Secretary of State's letter to the Committee on 11 March 2026 10. The Air Navigation (Amendment) Order 2026 (SI 2026/99), which corrects defects in SI 2025/850 and extends UAS offence provisions, came into force on 3 March 2026 11.

The first thing to watch is the full text of the Bill once it appears: whether it is the Civil Aviation Bill announced in the King's Speech or a narrower consumer-protection vehicle that will run alongside a separate Commons Bill — its First Reading title points strongly to consumer protection and regulatory reform as the lead, but the King's Speech framing also names airport expansion as a Bill objective 12. The second is the DfT response to the May 2026 targeted consultation on the aviation safety regulatory framework 3, which is likely to seed the Bill's regulatory-reform clauses. The third is the new Airports National Policy Statement timetable — PQ 47788 of 29 April 2025 4 flagged this as overdue, and the absence of an updated ANPS will leave Heathrow's expansion case relying on the 2018 designation 5 which sits in tension with the Climate Change Act 2008 trajectory the EAC has scrutinised 67. The fourth is the Government's response to Heathrow's third-runway proposals invited in January 2025 8: a decision in 2026 would force the Bill to carry the political weight of a contested expansion. Watch also for the Civil Aviation Commission referenced in PQ 115445 of 4 March 2026 9 — if this is a new statutory body to be created by the Bill, it will reshape the regulator perimeter. Finally, the 30 September 2026 transition under SI 2025/878 for LAPL(A) class-rating recency is a small but firm operational milestone that will surface complaints from the general-aviation community during the Bill's passage.

There is unresolved ambiguity about the scope of the Lords Bill introduced on 14 May 2026 — its title names consumer protection and regulatory reform but the King's Speech frames a single Civil Aviation Bill covering airport expansion as well 12. The political risk is that the EAC scrutiny line on climate-and-nature reconciliation 34 forces concessions during passage that the airport-expansion frame cannot easily absorb. Inferred from corpus gap: no Impact Assessment for the Civil Aviation Bill is on this thread and the Government Response to the May 2026 targeted consultation is not yet available — both will be material to substantive scrutiny. The CAA's regulatory headroom under the rewritten Article 71 (SI 2026/460) is itself uncertain because the only published guardrail is the Annex II essential requirements 5. Finally, PQ activity around the 'Civil Aviation Commission' 6 and an aviation ombudsman 7 points to institutional design questions the Bill text has not yet answered.