Open Skies Cornwall launches in Falmouth, UK

Open Skies Cornwall, a research and development project linking end-user requirements with the next generation of drones, their infrastructure requirements and enabling technology, has launched in Falmouth, UK. Mott MacDonald is providing project and programme management services to help co-ordinate the initiative in support of DronePrep and the wider consortium.

Funded by the Innovate UK Future Flight Challenge Phase 3, Open Skies Cornwall will seek to develop and demonstrate the delivery of goods such as medicine and mail to remote places via drones. By developing ‘sky-highways’, the project will connect NHS, Royal Mail, maritime and local authority assets to local people in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

The Future Flight challenge at UK Research and Innovation and delivered by Innovate UK announced the funding of 17 projects last year. They will share £73 million in funding to develop and show integrated aviation systems and new vehicle technologies.

John Reavy, director of airports and aviation, Mott MacDonald, said: “Drones allow the quicker delivery of medicine and goods to hard-to-reach places and vulnerable communities, while minimising environmental impact and carbon emissions.

Our relationship with an SME like DronePrep allows us to bring our aviation and maritime expertise to bear on a project right at the bleeding edge of the future of flight and one that has the potential to benefit people around the world. We are looking forward to continuing to collaborate with DronePrep and explore further opportunities both in the UK and internationally.”

Gareth Whatmore, CEO, DronePrep, said: “As we enter 2023 it is very exciting to see the Open Skies Cornwall programme taking flight. This demonstration flight within the Falmouth Harbour Testbed is the first of many pioneering flights in our unique airspace environments; over the next two years we will be using the intelligence gathered from the community via the Drone Delivery Register to plan for meaningful drone deliveries to support maritime, essential healthcare logistics and parcel delivery.

Our partnership with Mott MacDonald ensures that we have the best project management systems and experienced resource underpinning progress on the Open Skies Cornwall programme and our innovation and project architecture team is very excited to explore the opportunity to create new pioneering projects globally.”

Open Skies Cornwall is the second UKRI Future Flight project Mott MacDonald is involved with. In August 2022, it was announced that the HEART Consortium had been awarded £10M under the scheme to develop and demonstrate a new business model for sub-regional aviation using hydrogen-electric powered, highly automated, zero-carbon aircraft.

The two Future Flight projects follow the news that Mott MacDonald has partnered with Ferrovial and Grimshaw to develop the design and engineering components for a network of more than 25 vertiports across the UK.