Skyports to develop Europe’s first test vertiport in France, ahead of potential launch at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

Sky­ports is devel­op­ing Europe’s first test ver­ti­port in France, which rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step towards launch­ing com­mer­cial advanced air mobil­i­ty ser­vices in time for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The pro­gramme is part of the Re.Invent Air Mobil­i­ty ini­tia­tive led by French air­port oper­a­tor Groupe ADP, glob­al mobil­i­ty com­pa­ny RATP Group and Choose Paris Region, a French agency for busi­ness and inno­va­tion.

This is the first devel­op­ment of its kind in Europe and is being sup­port­ed by DGAC, the French Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and EASA, the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency.

The ver­ti­port will be designed, built, and oper­at­ed by Sky­ports at Groupe ADP’s Cer­gy-Pon­toise Air­field in Paris. It will ini­tial­ly serve as a tech­nol­o­gy test­bed to pro­vide a safe and real­is­tic envi­ron­ment for Sky­ports and mem­bers of the ini­tia­tive to inte­grate and test crit­i­cal tech­nolo­gies required to enable advanced air mobil­i­ty in Europe.

Ankit Dass, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer at Sky­ports, said: “Tech­nol­o­gy will play a crit­i­cal role in ensur­ing the safe­ty and oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy of ver­ti­ports. The inte­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy is at the core of our ver­ti­port design, devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion. At Sky­ports we are devel­op­ing our sys­tems in col­lab­o­ra­tion with vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers, oper­a­tors and lead­ing avi­a­tion tech com­pa­nies.”   

The Sky­ports ver­ti­port will be con­struct­ed using mod­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy so that it can eas­i­ly be relo­cat­ed to a new loca­tion at the end of the pro­gramme, serv­ing as the first com­mer­cial ver­ti­port in France.

The inte­gra­tion of a ver­ti­port with­in an exist­ing air­port site is chal­leng­ing and com­plex. Sky­ports’ exper­tise in ground infra­struc­ture and Groupe ADP’s remit in infra­struc­ture plan­ning, pro­vi­sion and per­mit­ting are an ide­al part­ner­ship to imple­ment the solu­tion that will suc­cess­ful­ly address this chal­lenge.

The test ver­ti­port will be equipped with a suite of tech­nolo­gies includ­ing bio­met­ric iden­ti­ty man­age­ment, re-charg­ing equip­ment, sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness capa­bil­i­ties and weath­er sta­tions. The data col­lect­ed dur­ing the test­ing phase will be essen­tial for the devel­op­ment of AAM reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works.

The oper­a­tional test­bed will be used by lead­ing eVTOL air­craft OEMs includ­ing Air­bus, eHang, Pip­istrel, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and Volo­copter, which will con­duct test flights and demon­stra­tions over the next three years in the run-up to the Olympics. 

Augustin de Romanet, Aéro­ports de Paris SA — Groupe ADP Chair­man and CEO, said: “Our Pon­toise air­field brings togeth­er a unique ecosys­tem around new air mobil­i­ty and the tri­al plat­form we are launch­ing today is unprece­dent­ed in Europe. It will func­tion as a con­crete exper­i­ment to explore the field of pos­si­bil­i­ties of a decar­bonised and inno­v­a­tive avi­a­tion, and to devel­op the low alti­tude avi­a­tion mar­ket (below 300 metres), which has been large­ly unex­plored until now.

“In Pon­toise, we will test all the com­po­nents of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty. Groupe ADP will ful­ly play its role as an aggre­ga­tor of activ­i­ties to facil­i­tate the surge of new uses that rec­on­cile a small­er envi­ron­men­tal foot­print, inno­va­tion and com­mon util­i­ty.”

Groupe ADP devel­ops and man­ages air­ports, includ­ing Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Paris-Orly and Paris-Le Bour­get. In 2020, through its Paris Aéro­port brand, the group car­ried 33.1 mil­lion pas­sen­gers and 1.8 mil­lion met­ric tons of freight and mail at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly, and over 96.3 mil­lion pas­sen­gers in air­ports abroad.

Boast­ing an excep­tion­al geo­graph­ic loca­tion and a major catch­ment area, the group is pur­su­ing its strat­e­gy of adapt­ing and mod­ernising its ter­mi­nal facil­i­ties and upgrad­ing qual­i­ty of ser­vices.