Munich Airport teams up with Urban-Air Port on design and operation of take-off and landing infrastructure for eVTOL aircraft

Munich Air­port Inter­na­tion­al (MAI) and Urban-Air Port will col­lab­o­rate in devel­op­ing air­craft ground infra­struc­ture and air­port oper­a­tions which will facil­i­tate the ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing of elec­tric air taxis.

The part­ners will pro­vide a roadmap for effi­cient and sus­tain­able flight oper­a­tions, cou­pling MAI’s world lead­ing air­port knowl­edge and oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence with Urban-Air Port’s inno­v­a­tive ground infra­struc­ture tech­nol­o­gy and solu­tions.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion will also see MAI bring both its avi­a­tion and non-avi­a­tion exper­tise to the plan­ning, devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion of Air One, cre­at­ing crit­i­cal syn­er­gies for the suc­cess­ful intro­duc­tion and oper­a­tion of urban-air ports.

Dr. Ralf Gaffal, MAI’s Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, said: “The avi­a­tion indus­try is con­stant­ly evolv­ing. While Urban Air Mobil­i­ty was a vague vision just a few years ago, this trend is with­in reach today. We as Munich Air­port Inter­na­tion­al see great poten­tial in this new mode of trans­porta­tion and have devel­oped an advanced air mobil­i­ty pro­gram to active­ly shape the future.

“Part­ner­ing with Urban-Air Port® allows us to join forces in design­ing, imple­ment­ing and oper­at­ing scal­able and sus­tain­able urban-air ports around the world.”

Urban-Air Port® is cur­rent­ly deploy­ing its ‘Air One’ pro­gramme, which is a ful­ly oper­a­tional and inte­grat­ed air­port for drones and eVTOL air­craft that inter­links air mobil­i­ty with ground trans­porta­tion in a mul­ti­modal hub.

Air One will be pre­sent­ed to the indus­try and gen­er­al pub­lic for the first in Coven­try, UK, in 2022, demon­strat­ing an ultra-com­pact, rapid­ly deploy­able and mul­ti-func­tion­al oper­a­tions hub for manned and unmanned vehi­cles. This will pro­vide air­craft com­mand and con­trol, charg­ing and refu­elling, car­go and pas­sen­ger load­ing and oth­er asso­ci­at­ed ser­vices.

Ear­li­er this year, the com­pa­ny announced it was work­ing with Hyundai’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Divi­sion to devel­op 65 elec­tric urban-air ports world­wide to meet the grow­ing demand for autonomous air­borne drones and eVTOL air­craft. It also part­nered with Alti­tude Angel and Safe­guard Ver­ti­ports to work on the world’s first infra­struc­ture pro­gramme, which is backed by the UK Gov­ern­ment.

As well as the ‘Air One’ pro­gramme, Urban-Air Port will col­lab­o­rate on longer term projects and oppor­tu­ni­ties with MAI, with an ini­tial focus on use cas­es and mar­kets which are expect­ed to emerge in the next cou­ple of years.

Ricky Sand­hu, Founder & Exec­u­tive Chair­man at Urban-Air Port®, said: “Urban-Air Port® is not only work­ing with the world’s lead­ing devel­op­ers of eVTOLs, but also devel­op­ing the full ecosys­tem to enable air mobil­i­ty to take flight by build­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships with major mobil­i­ty and indus­try part­ners across the world.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion with Munich Air­port Inter­na­tion­al, the ‘5‑Star Stan­dard’ in air­port oper­a­tions allows us to joint­ly devel­op our exper­tise in air­port devel­op­ment and oper­a­tions. More­over, we can lay the foun­da­tions for a glob­al­ly inte­grat­ed urban air trans­port net­work.

“Togeth­er, we strive to play a major role in shap­ing the future of urban air mobil­i­ty and to equip and adapt the avi­a­tion indus­try to meet the needs of the com­ing decades.”