Ferrovial announces new project to develop 20-strong network of sustainable vertiports in Spain

Fer­rovial Air­ports, the air­port infra­struc­ture man­age­ment com­pa­ny, has launched a project to devel­op a net­work of more than 20 inter­con­nect­ed and 100 per cent sus­tain­able ver­ti­ports in Spain.

The com­pa­ny — which has a 25 per cent stake in Lon­don’s Heathrow Air­port, one of the busiest in the world — aims to design, build and oper­ate all the infra­struc­ture that is required to oper­ate eVTOL air­craft. As the project is only just in its ear­ly stages, a loca­tion and pre­dict­ed timescale has yet to be announced.

But the project’s finan­cial via­bil­i­ty hinges on access to the Euro­pean Recov­ery Funds, for which it has already ini­ti­at­ed the nec­es­sary pro­ce­dures by sub­mit­ting replies to the Expres­sions of Inter­est at the Min­istry of Indus­try and the Min­istry of Eco­log­i­cal Tran­si­tion.

Gon­za­lo Velas­co, Head of Inno­va­tion at Fer­rovial Air­ports, said: “Ver­ti­ports rep­re­sent a major step for­ward in achiev­ing sus­tain­able infra­struc­tures for air mobil­i­ty in the imme­di­ate future. Spain is well placed to be at the fore­front of elec­tric mobil­i­ty and has the mar­ket poten­tial to achieve it.”

The ver­ti­port design is being devel­oped in coop­er­a­tion with Span­ish multi­na­tion­al IDOM, to cre­ate an infra­struc­ture adapt­ed to pas­sen­ger trans­port using elec­tric vehi­cles.

All the infra­struc­ture and ser­vices will make use of green ener­gy in order to attain the high­est stan­dards of sus­tain­abil­i­ty that are envis­aged. It is also planned to pro­vide the ver­ti­ports with suit­able areas for park­ing both eVTOL air­craft and ter­res­tri­al elec­tric vehi­cles, as well as charg­ing sta­tions.

Fer­rovial Air­ports is work­ing with Span­ish com­pa­ny Dat­Ac­tionS, a Big Data spe­cial­ist, to iden­ti­fy opti­mal loca­tions and esti­mate user demand. It also wants the sup­port of Europe’s lead­ing eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers, such as Air­bus — which is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its CityAir­bus — Lil­i­um, and Tec­na­lia, a research and tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment cen­tre based in Spain.

Jorge Gil, CEO of Fer­rovial Air­ports, added: “At Fer­rovial Air­ports we are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing new sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty alter­na­tives that will enable us to decon­gest inter­ci­ty traf­fic and offer a fast, com­fort­able pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence.”

This news fol­lows on from Fer­rovial’s ear­li­er announce­ment with Ger­man eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Lil­i­um. Both com­pa­nies signed a frame­work agree­ment to build a net­work of 10 ver­ti­ports in Flori­da, USA.

Fer­rovial Air­ports has more than 20 years’ expe­ri­ence of invest­ing, devel­op­ing and oper­at­ing at 33 air­ports around the world, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia and Chile. It cur­rent­ly has four air­ports in the Unit­ed King­dom.

As well as a stake in Heathrow Air­port, it is the airport’s core share­hold­er and indus­try part­ner and owns 50 per cent of Glas­gow, Aberdeen and Southamp­ton air­ports.