Draft Airspace Modernisation Strategy

Pilot, LAA inspector, owner of two GA vintage aircraft both with no on board electrical generation and only battery operated radio.

The whole of UK airspace needs to be reviewed not just tweaked at the edges as seems to be the plan. A ground up review starting from a clean sheet on what is needed now and in the foreseeable future and a migration pan defined from what we have now. The class A-D airspace needs to be reviewed and re-designed to fit with the performance of today's airliners, not only to free up the excessively large area of low level controlled airspace but also to link all airports with controlled airspace in a combined way using centralised ATC.
with may be a hand over to tower /ground once established on approach not disparate separate fiefdoms as seems to be the case now. This will enable flexible free flow of passenger and military aircraft to efficiently maximise their performance, minimise pollution, fuel use, noise etc. in well defined low to mid level corridors and using modern electronics users to plan and fly more direct routing in upper levels.
The controlled airspace could be flexible and with areas not in use on that day freed up for others to use with minimum need for communication with ATC. The use of multiple ID systems should be encouraged for collision avoidance should be encouraged but must not be mandatory until a light weight, low cost, self contained portable system is available.

You are messing at the edges and this seems to be a rapid response to the all party group demands following your unilateral Farnborough decision. This is not the railways where there is a large amount of fixed track and adding or changing is very expensive this is open air, the cost of changing is paperwork and the effort to sit down and plan.

There are no roads in the air. Start again with what the future needs and be flexible to review and change again every 10 years or so as demands and technology change.

Freeing up of airspace not currently active e.g. military zones and danger areas at weekends that are normally in active between certain times, notam if different and easy to clear an area if suddenly required. Likewise little used airports like Norwich can have be D at active times when schedules flights due and E or lower most of the time.

It needs a small team to define what is ideal in future and to then demand those organisations that want the airspace to provide the resources to be allowed to have the airspace they need. No organisation is going to give up what they have if there is no penalty for not doing so. May be a charge per cubic meter of airspace per hour would be better?