The RPAS and AAM Strategic Regulatory Roadmap

TWG review - 26 March 2026

Work on AFAF is progressing.  Engagement with the AFAF TWG is ongoing, including 2026 workshops to develop the Australian Airspace Vision.

In 2025, the TWG helped develop measures to assess airspace changes, including sourcing supporting data.

Further TWG meetings will be held during 2026 in addition to support the publication of the AFAF later this year.

TWG review - 4 March 2025

Work on AFAF is progressing. We conducted a review of the TWG tasking instructions and membership to ensure adequate representation of emerging technologies. We held a TWG meeting in November 2024 with new members in attendance.

FIMS revised launch - 31 October 2025

Airservices Australia, in collaboration with FIMS vendor Frequentis and the initial UAS Service Suppliers, is now working towards a revised launch of FIMS in late May 2026.

This revised timeline allows Airservices to complete additional validation and assurance activities. This will ensure the system is fully ready from day one.

Plans remain in place to provide automated authorisations for 28 controlled aerodromes upon FIMS go-live in May.

Future of automatic airspace authorisations - 21 July 2025

Since 2021, CASA and Airservices Australia have been trialling automated airspace authorisations (AAA) for commercial drone operations at select civil controlled aerodromes.

Later this year, the trial will transition to a permanent flight authorisation service delivered through Airservices' Flight Information Management System (FIMS) and participating third party service providers.

Expansion of AAAT - 4 March 2025

We expanded the automated airspace authorisations trial (AAAT), a joint initiative by CASA and Airservices.

More than 1,400 automated flight authorisations have been processed. This has saved industry more than $1.2 million in application fees.

CASA continues to work with Airservices to expand authorisations to all civil-controlled aerodromes via FIMS at the end of 2025.

Clarification of activity - 25 November 2025

We continue to work closely with Airservices and UAS service suppliers (USS) on the introduction of FIMS-enabled UTM services. Development of the Australian Future Airspace Framework is progressing. This work has better informed the next steps and feasibility of RPAS airspace activities. However, a high number of dependencies have been identified for this activity.

The previous wording of the activity was not clear. Through consultation with SMEs and the Technical Working Group the activity and milestone have been updated.

Activity changes - 25 November 2025

Progress on international separation standards remains slow. Our increased understanding of the diversity of RPAS operations, each with different risk profiles increases the complexity of this activity.

Through consultation with SMEs and the Technical Working Group, we have updated the activity and milestone. The changes more accurately reflect what we can realistically provide under current policy settings, technological uptake and equipage norms.