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Blade Urban Air Mobility partners with Ross Aviation and plans to build vertiport in New York State

Blade Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and Ross Avi­a­tion are team­ing up to accel­er­ate the roll out of urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices in regions where oper­a­tions from both com­pa­nies over­lap — and intend to build a ver­ti­port for eVTOL air­craft in Westch­ester Coun­ty, New York.

Locat­ed at Westch­ester Coun­ty Air­port, the ver­ti­port will include the infra­struc­ture required to hangar, charge, stage and deploy EVA (Elec­tric Ver­ti­cal Air­craft) or eVTOL air­craft as they become com­mer­cial­ly avail­able. No fur­ther details have been released about the time­line of its con­struc­tion.

Bran­don Keene, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer of Blade, said: “Fol­low­ing the intro­duc­tion of EVA into the avi­a­tion ecosys­tem, geo­graph­i­cal­ly-con­strained areas like Man­hat­tan will become much more acces­si­ble by air on a cost-effec­tive basis. This pilot pro­gramme, which uses con­ven­tion­al rotor­craft, will help us assess key use cas­es, dri­ve sched­ule opti­miza­tion, and deter­mine fli­er needs for mul­ti-modal con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“The poten­tial for an EVA-ready ver­ti­port at Westch­ester will not only cat­alyze the devel­op­ment of the indus­try but will enable mean­ing­ful reduc­tion of car­bon emis­sions and the noise foot­print of short dis­tance avi­a­tion in the region.”

The new part­ner­ship will also see Blade launch a pilot pro­gramme offer­ing dai­ly heli­copter flights between Ross Aviation’s West Ter­mi­nal at Westch­ester Coun­ty Air­port and Blade heli­port ter­mi­nals in Man­hat­tan, to serve com­muters from the Westchester/Connecticut area.

In 2019 alone, these com­muters took more than 40 mil­lion trips com­mut­ing to and from New York City, the major­i­ty dri­ving alone in a car for 1–2 hours in each direc­tion. Blade expects the five-day-per-week ser­vice to begin as ear­ly as March 2021, trans­form­ing that 1–2 hour dri­ve into a 10–15 minute flight. The price per flight per per­son is expect­ed to be approx­i­mate­ly $175. Blade expects to offer com­muter pass­es some­time after launch that will reduce the per seat cost to $95.

Rob Wiesen­thal, CEO of Blade, said: “Even with the expect­ed increase of remote work­ing post-pan­dem­ic, we believe that inter­mit­tent com­mut­ing of one to two times per week between the sub­urbs and New York City will be a real­i­ty.

“Con­ges­tion on tri-state area roads is now esti­mat­ed at 90 per cent of pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els. Giv­en the com­bi­na­tion of being near Uber Black pric­ing at $175, and the time sav­ings of an approx­i­mate­ly 12-minute flight, this ser­vice makes sense today and over the long term.”

Beyond the greater New York area, Blade and Ross Avi­a­tion intend to work togeth­er to offer Blade ser­vices and ter­mi­nals at one or more Ross Avi­a­tion Fixed Based Oper­a­tions (FBOs) in Bed­ford and Cape Cod, Mass­a­chu­setts as well as Palm Springs/Thermal and Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia.

This pro­gramme is expect­ed to launch in the sec­ond half of 2021. In addi­tion, the com­pa­nies plan to seek addi­tion­al areas for coop­er­a­tion as Ross Avi­a­tion adds FBOs to its net­work.

Bri­an Cor­bett, CEO of Ross Avi­a­tion said: “Ross Avi­a­tion is con­stant­ly look­ing to strength­en and expand our net­work. We view this alliance with Blade and our con­tin­ued invest­ment in inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy as a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther enhance our flight hos­pi­tal­i­ty net­work, enrich cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ences, and strength­en our rela­tion­ships with the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.

“For our exist­ing jet cus­tomers, who val­ue safe­ty, time, and care above most else when trav­el­ing, our alliance with Blade will make get­ting to and from New York City even more effi­cient while attract­ing new cus­tomers to the Ross Avi­a­tion net­work.”

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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