The future of flight is changing

Reducing emissions

Aviation technologies are undergoing a pivotal moment, with innovative developments taking place across many fields. The UKRI Future Flight Challenge is working to develop air vehicles that are powered by hydrogen or electricity, opening up the potential for new greener aviation options in the UK.

Moving people forward

Future Flight Social Insight (FFSI) is an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded pioneering social science research program. Working with the UKRI Future Flight Challenge, our research seeks to better understand the wider societal and economic impacts of these technological developments. For example, eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing)  vehicles utilise new electric propulsion systems opening up new aviation applications including urban and rural transport, cargo delivery, and disaster response. 

Delivering the future

In the coming years, drones may play an increasingly prominent role in areas such as agriculture, construction, and logistics. FFSI aims to capture different communities’ hopes and concerns around these advances in aviation. Capturing different groups’ perspectives on these technologies early on will help shape their development and regulation.

But what is the impact on society?

And how are these things powered? Are we just taking pollution from the street and putting it in to the air?

Public Dialogue Participant

If this is going to be useful, it’s got to be useful for ordinary people to use it. You don’t want it for oligarchs to fly stuff around and the rest of us have to just watch it.

Public Dialogue Participant

If it takes traffic off the streets and lower emissions and we lower our carbon footprint it could be a good thing.

Public Dialogue Participant

[I hope] congestion in the sky means less congestion on the road, otherwise what’s the advantage?

Public Dialogue Participant

Taxi drivers, crane operating companies, delivery drivers […] they’d all be negatively impacted.

Public Dialogue Participant

I feel the bigger picture is if they cut emissions, that’s got to be good for wildlife as well and addressing climate change more generally.

Public Dialogue Participant