How can we build airspace systems that bridge national, regional, and local priorities while enabling safe, scalable operations in a fast-moving sector?
At our Executives focused, invite-only event, Aerial Cities 2024, a panel of European regulators, policymakers, economic development leaders, and technologists explored this question and arrived to the conclusion that nothing moves forward without project-based collaboration.
Bringing together voices from national aviation authorities, regional innovation agencies, and exciting testbed initiatives, panellists offered real-world insights into how coordination happens in practice and how meaningful progress starts with action, not just policy.
From Zurich’s €4M U-space corridor launch to Berlin’s certified medical drone deliveries to Fuerteventura’s €20M stratoport investment, panellists shared concrete examples of how coordinated governance is driving real progress; even in fragmented and complex environments.
Coordination through complexity: Project-driven solutions in fragmented airspace
From the start of the panel, speakers painted a vivid picture of the challenge: overlapping stakeholders, conflicting legislative frameworks, and countless layers of policy to navigate.
“In the UK alone, we’ve got 5 different primary legislation pieces, 15 secondary, and I think I counted 19 further government policies around things like Jet Zero,” said UK CAA’s Colin Chesterton. “It’s big and it’s complex.”
In Switzerland, the challenge is amplified by hyper-local autonomy.
“We have about 2,100 municipalities,” explained Swiss FOCA’s Larissa Haas. “All of them act independently; and they all have their own roles and responsibilities and, of course, also power in implementing policies.”
Meanwhile, Ireland is focusing on streamlining engagement.
“You sift out who needs to be sitting in the room,” said Paul Kennedy of the IAA. The key, he added, is making those conversations as efficient and relevant as possible; avoiding token participation and focusing on decision-makers who can actually move things forward.
So, how do authorities overcome these layers of complexity when no formal frameworks exist to connect them? Across the board, the answer was clear: Targeted, real-world projects.
“In Ireland, we’re seeing real success through city partnerships,” said Paul. “Dublin City Council, Research Ireland, ourselves, and the universities. They’re bringing us all together around specific deployments.”
Switzerland adopted a similar approach, empowering local actors through direct engagement.
“We went to local authorities, sat together, discussed with them; and we gave them the responsibility to come up with geographical zones. It was a huge education effort, but it really allowed for innovation,” explained Larissa.
Colin emphasised the same point from the UK perspective: “The only way we make change is by focusing effort on individual projects (...) What’s a real tangible? That’s where you get momentum and drive.”
The pattern is evident: Cross-sector projects are becoming the true governance structure for modernising airspace. They create clarity, foster shared learning, and allow real operational lessons to inform future frameworks.
Culture clashes and communication gaps
Despite shared ambitions, the aviation and technology sectors often operate with wildly different assumptions. Not surprisingly, this cultural divide has emerged as one of the biggest barriers to progress.
“We’ve asked new drone operators the same set of questions we ask traditional aviation, but the data we need might be completely different,” Colin explained. This mismatch of expectations can frustrate both sides, with regulators appearing slow and rigid, and industry coming off as naive or unstructured.
Switzerland experienced this disconnect first-hand during the rollout of its U-space airspace plans.
“We completely overwhelmed local authorities with the complexity of the project,” Larissa reflected. “It was quite painstaking work.”
Of course, the issue wasn’t just the technical ambition. It was how it was communicated and how quickly local governments were expected to catch up — which unfortunately is the case much of the time across multiple countries and regulators.
Paul offered a similar perspective from Ireland, pointing to the fundamentally different time horizons and operating cultures involved.
“There’s definitely that entrepreneurial spirit,” he noted — the drive to launch fast, test often, and adjust on the fly.
Regulators, by contrast, are hardwired to prioritise risk mitigation and compliance over repetition. While that’s not a flaw, it’s certainly a feature that needs active management in a fast-moving sector like ours.
From sandboxes to stakeholder workshops, panellists agreed that communication must be treated as a foundational layer of governance. Without that, even the best-laid plans will stall under the weight of misunderstanding.
From sandboxes to scaled operations
Across Europe, regulatory sandboxes are evolving from testbeds into launchpads; bridging the gap between experimentation and commercial success.
“In Berlin, we now have companies delivering pharmacy goods by drone and making revenue. One is even certified to carry dangerous goods,” noted Berlin Partner’s Marielies.
This shift from pilots to profit marks a turning point not just for businesses, but for regulators evaluating how to greenlight the next generation of aerial services.
Ireland has followed a similar trajectory.
“We started with testing system reliability, how many UAS could be controlled by one person, and now they’re operating commercially,” explained Paul. Success, he added, hinges on creating safe environments where innovative ideas can be validated before they’re scaled.
In Switzerland, Larissa pointed to the value of early, structured collaboration with industry.
“We were able to shape the regulatory framework based on those learnings,” she said, referencing Switzerland’s U-space Implementation Partnership. The partnership allowed authorities to test certification processes, technology integrations and coordination mechanisms in a controlled setting, while staying responsive to industry feedback.
However, transitioning from sandbox to scale isn’t automatic. It requires dedication and continuity — maintaining collaboration between regulators and industry long after the pilot phase concludes. For many authorities, that means institutionalising what they’ve learned and embedding those lessons into more permanent regulatory pathways. That’s where real transformation starts to take root.
Building airspace for tomorrow: Technology, risk, and resilience
Achieving scalable, integrated drone operations will require more than policy — it will demand a rethink of the digital and physical infrastructure that governs our skies.
For the UK CAA, modernisation is increasingly about information exchange.
“We’ve got a bit of an analogue system around CNS at the moment,” said Colin. “Reliable, robust exchange of data is going to be key.”
That means investing in System-Wide Information Management (SWIM) infrastructure and ensuring that digital-native stakeholders can interact with legacy systems.
Zurich’s U-space airspace volume exemplifies this dual challenge: Technological readiness must be matched with regulatory and societal buy-in.
“We’ve received over 200 comments, and the final risk assessment workshop is coming later this year,” explained Larissa.
Encompassing 30 municipalities and two cantons, the Zurich corridor aims to become the first fully digitalised urban airspace in Switzerland — launching in Q2 2025.
This fusion of policy and infrastructure is also playing out in more remote regions. On the island of Fuerteventura, Spain, Sergio is overseeing a €20 million investment in the Canary Islands’ first stratoport — a runway and innovation centre designed for High Altitude Platform Systems (HAPS).
“We are trying to build the whole ecosystem,” he explained, highlighting its potential to support missions for biodiversity, forest fire prevention, and volcanic monitoring.
Read more about the Canarias Stratoport for HAPS & UAS project here.
Crucially, these projects are not just about future-proofing — they’re about enabling operations that are already in demand. But as regulators acknowledged, the transition won’t be smooth unless technology and governance evolve together. That means rewriting outdated processes, digitising approvals, and creating clear, consistent risk frameworks for new airspace users.
Final takeaway: If you build it (together), they will come
At the heart of this conversation is an important realisation: Modernising airspace isn’t about moving faster alone but coordinating better together. More and more, authorities across Europe are discovering that the key to unlocking scalable drone operations lies in project-driven, cross-sector collaboration.
Paul emphasised this point, noting that aviation regulators are shifting from gatekeepers to enablers.
“We're learning as we go. This cannot be driven by regulatory authority alone. We're there to enable it. The people driving the industry are the experts in it,” said Paul.
Ireland’s sandbox programme, he explained, has become a testing ground not only for drones, but for new forms of governance, public engagement and risk modelling.
Marielies, representing Berlin’s economic development agency, stressed the importance of relationship-building: “You always have to open that door again and again and again. And one time, it will stay open,” she explained.
Her team has moved away from assumptions and leaned into deep stakeholder engagement — starting with local politics and community groups, long before launch.
For Switzerland, the journey has been equally instructive.
“We completely underestimated how much of a communication challenge this would be,” said Larissa.
Yet, despite the obstacles, Zurich’s U-space launch is set to mark a historic first for urban digital airspace in Europe.
Moderated by Lorenzo Murzilli, Co-founder and CEO of Murzilli Consulting, this powerful discussion featured insights from Paul Kennedy, Head of Aviation Infrastructure at the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA); Marielies Becker, Senior Manager for Innovation Aerospace at Berlin Partner for Business and Technology; Larissa Haas, UAS Policy Coordinator for the Strategy and Innovation Unit at the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA); Colin Chesterton, Challenge Lead at the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA); and Sergio David Díaz Martínez, Aerospace Engineer at Fuerteventura Technology Park.
Across all these regions, a common thread has emerged: Success comes from bringing the right people to the table early, testing ideas together, and being willing to adapt. The future of aerial mobility won’t be defined by any single regulation or technology — but by how well public and private stakeholders can collaborate to build trust, systems and momentum.
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