Malaysia Airports, Skyports and Volocopter to conduct feasibility study on vertiport development in Malaysia

Volo­copter and Sky­ports are com­bin­ing their exper­tise with Malaysia Air­ports to con­duct a fea­si­bil­i­ty study which will exam­ine suit­able ver­ti­port solu­tions and con­sid­er fac­tors such as cus­tomer flow, demand and how urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions will be inte­grat­ed.

This is the first step of a tri­par­tite mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing, which was announced ear­li­er this week and the study will also exam­ine ways to enable the safe take-off and land­ing of pas­sen­ger eVTOL air­craft.

The Asia-Pacif­ic region is esti­mat­ed to have about 45 per cent of the advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket by 2035, which equates to $9.5 bil­lion USD, and the col­lab­o­ra­tion between these com­pa­nies forms part of the five-year Sul­tan Abdul Aziz Shah Air­port, Sub­ang (LTSAAS) Regen­er­a­tion Plan.

It will explore the deploy­ment of rev­o­lu­tion­ary elec­tric air taxi ser­vices at LTSAAS as well as oth­er loca­tions through­out Malaysia, putting the coun­try at the fore­front in the region in terms of will­ing­ness to imple­ment urban air mobil­i­ty.

Malaysia Air­ports’ Group CEO, Dato’ Mohd Shukrie Mohd Salleh, said: “Air taxi tech­nol­o­gy and rev­o­lu­tion is the next big thing that we want to see hap­pen in Malaysian avi­a­tion. With LTSAAS offer­ing a syn­er­gis­tic ecosys­tem with­in the avi­a­tion and aero­space sec­tors, it is time­ly for us to explore this new ser­vice as it com­ple­ments oth­er key devel­op­ments of the regen­er­a­tion ini­tia­tive.

Volo­copter and Sky­ports are both lead­ers in their respec­tive fields of advanced air mobil­i­ty and we hope to fur­ther future-proof LTSAAS’s posi­tion in Asia Pacif­ic by cater­ing to research, assem­bly, man­u­fac­tur­ing, main­te­nance, repair and over­haul (MRO) in addi­tion to air taxi oper­a­tions. Our objec­tive is to pro­vide end to end, mid to high val­ue capa­bil­i­ties and solu­tions that are anchored by top tier oper­a­tors. 

“LTSAAS Regen­er­a­tion will offer var­i­ous devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to avi­a­tion and aero­space play­ers world­wide thus echo­ing the government’s orig­i­nal intent to turn LTSAAS into both an inter­na­tion­al aero­space cen­tre and busi­ness avi­a­tion hub.”,

Sky­ports is the world’s lead­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture provider and in part­ner­ship with Volo­copter, was the first to build a full-scale pas­sen­ger air taxi ver­ti­port. It was launched as part of a tri­al which took place in Sin­ga­pore in 2019.

Among the roles of Sky­ports in this tri­par­tite MoU includes explor­ing the devel­op­ment and oper­a­tions of ver­ti­ports at air­ports oper­at­ed by Malaysia Air­ports, which are sub­ject­ed to the agreed busi­ness and devel­op­ment mod­el. Sky­ports cur­rent­ly has infra­struc­ture projects in devel­op­ment else­where in Asia, as well as in Europe and North Amer­i­ca. 

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, said: “Malaysia Air­ports’ ambi­tions for future proof­ing Sul­tan Abdul Aziz Shah Air­port and imple­ment­ing elec­tric air taxi ser­vices through­out Malaysia align with Sky­ports’ ambi­tions to deliv­er UAM in the Asia Pacif­ic mar­ket.

“The fea­si­bil­i­ty study will allow us to explore all the ele­ments need­ed to cre­ate a future air mobil­i­ty mod­el that could be deployed across the region. Our track record of suc­cess with Volo­copter com­bined with a wealth of expe­ri­ence and Malaysia Air­ports’ objec­tives, make this an excit­ing ini­tia­tive.” 

Mean­while, Volo­copter’s role is to assess the deploy­ment of eVTOL air­craft and oper­a­tions of urban air taxi ser­vices from ver­ti­ports at LTSAAS. It is the only eVTOL devel­op­er with a prod­uct port­fo­lio of mul­ti­copter and fixed-wing designs that can be used for pas­sen­ger air taxis and car­go trans­porta­tion.

Volo­copter is tak­ing a holis­tic approach to UAM, by devel­op­ing an entire ecosys­tem that con­nects the nec­es­sary com­po­nents to offer elec­tric flight in cities. Its track record includes design­ing and pio­neer­ing the first pilot­ed and ful­ly elec­tric air taxi in the world.

Chris­t­ian Bauer, CCO of Volo­copter, added: “The South­east Asian Mar­ket is one of the largest and most inter­est­ing ones for UAM due to its geo­graph­i­cal lay­out and dense pop­u­la­tion. Our fea­si­bil­i­ty study will help give us insights on demand, cus­tomer expec­ta­tions, and air­port inte­gra­tion, which we can apply to oth­er mar­kets in the region.

“Hav­ing expert part­ners like Sky­ports and LTSAAS under­stand­ing the local needs, is deci­sive in bring­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nolo­gies like elec­tric air taxis to new mar­kets.” 

Malaysia Air­ports is one of the world’s largest air­port oper­a­tor groups in terms of num­ber of pas­sen­gers han­dled. It man­ages and oper­ates 39 air­ports in Malaysia and one inter­na­tion­al air­port in Istan­bul, Turkey.

The 39 air­ports in Malaysia com­prise five inter­na­tion­al air­ports, 16 domes­tic air­ports and 18 Short Take-Off and Land­ing Ports (STOL ports). Its flag­ship air­port, KL Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (KLIA) is among the region’s pre­ferred avi­a­tion hub.

Apart from oper­at­ing and man­ag­ing air­ports, the Group also dri­ves air­port devel­op­ment under its Aeropo­lis ini­tia­tive focus­ing on three core clus­ters: air car­go and logis­tics, aero­space and avi­a­tion and MICE and leisure. Its flag­ship air­port, KLIA, is cur­rent­ly set up to be a region­al dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre for eCom­merce with the pres­ence of the first glob­al eWTP (elec­tron­ic world trade plat­form) hub.

Mean­while, Lapan­gan Ter­bang Sul­tan Abdul Aziz Shah (LTSAAS) or bet­ter known as Sub­ang Air­port is being devel­oped into a pre­ferred aero­space and busi­ness avi­a­tion hub in the Asia-Pacif­ic region. It is cur­rent­ly the sec­ond most pre­ferred in Asia and fourth glob­al­ly for busi­ness avi­a­tion MRO.

The LTSAAS Regen­er­a­tion Plan is cen­tred on the key areas of aero­space, busi­ness avi­a­tion and urban com­mu­ni­ty air­port to fur­ther Malaysia’s aspi­ra­tion in becom­ing the num­ber one aero­space nation in the region.