SEA Milan Airports and Skyports to investigate potential deployment of landing vertiports across Italy

Sky­ports and SEA Milan Air­ports, one of the main air­port oper­a­tors in Europe, have signed a part­ner­ship agree­ment to inves­ti­gate the devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion of a net­work of land­ing ver­ti­ports across Italy.

Start­ing with Milan, where SEA man­ages Milan Malpen­sa and Milan Linate air­ports, the part­ner­ship will enable Sky­ports and SEA Group to explore the deploy­ment of vehi­cle-agnos­tic, scal­able and cost effec­tive ver­ti­ports across the city and the sur­round­ing region.

The part­ners have iden­ti­fied sev­er­al use-cas­es for advanced air mobil­i­ty, which could see com­mer­cial oper­a­tions being estab­lished in time for when the Milano Corti­na 2026 Win­ter Olympics take place.

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO and Founder of Sky­ports said: “I’m real­ly excit­ed about this part­ner­ship. Milan is a cen­tral busi­ness hub for Italy’s north­ern region which makes it an attrac­tive mar­ket for advanced air mobil­i­ty appli­ca­tions. Our plans are to have a num­ber of oper­a­tional ver­ti­ports across Italy by the mid-2020s in time for the 2026 Win­ter Olympics. SEA Milano is the ide­al part­ner for deliv­er­ing on our strat­e­gy in Italy.”

With Sky­ports’ deep knowl­edge of the advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket, reg­u­la­to­ry and tech­ni­cal exper­tise, and unpar­al­leled part­ner­ships with the lead­ing eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ers and oper­a­tors, and SEA Group’s deep-root­ed air­port infra­struc­ture and avi­a­tion expe­ri­ence, this part­ner­ship antic­i­pates deploy­ing a large num­ber of ver­ti­ports across Italy with­in the next years.

Arman­do Bruni­ni CEO of SEA Milan Air­ports said: “Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Sky­ports, the glob­al mar­ket leader in design­ing, build­ing and oper­at­ing ver­ti­ports will accel­er­ate SEA’s capa­bil­i­ty to deploy a net­work of ver­ti­ports, start­ing from greater Milan.

“And thus, sup­port­ing the start-up and devel­op­ment of this promis­ing and sus­tain­able mode of air mobil­i­ty, as set out in the frame­work guide­lines of the nation­al strate­gic roadmap for advanced air mobil­i­ty devel­oped by ENAC, the Ital­ian Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty.”

Italy is seen as one coun­try which can be an ear­ly adopter for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in Europe, with a high poten­tial for busi­ness, leisure and sight­see­ing flights.

A com­pa­ny already mak­ing progress is Walle Mobil­i­ty, which aims to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get interur­ban routes with­in 50km and offer routes as a shut­tle trans­port ser­vice via eVTOL air­craft. Its roadmap will see the com­pa­ny mock up a ver­ti­port design lat­er this year, with pub­lic demo days start­ing from 2022–23.

The con­struc­tion of the first ver­ti­port is planned for 2024, as well as the recruit­ment and train­ing of the country’s first pilot. The launch of Italy’s first eVTOL air­craft ser­vice will then launch a year lat­er in 2025.

It says it wants to rad­i­cal­ly trans­form pas­sen­ger trans­port in high-den­si­ty areas and con­nect strate­gic points of cities or tourist areas with impor­tant traf­fic nodes such as air­ports and rail­way sta­tions.

In terms of part­ner­ships, Walle Mobil­i­ty signed an agree­ment with Sky­roads, for­mer­ly D3 Tech­nolo­gies, to design a con­cept of oper­a­tions and ear­li­er this year, it con­firmed it will be work­ing with Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty to devel­op the first routes as ear­ly as 2026. Jaunt’s Jour­ney eVTOL air­craft will also be used for the first pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing ser­vices. Addi­tion­al­ly, Walle is work­ing with Airio to devel­op intel­li­gent flight paths.