Wisk to create working group with Long Beach in California and help prepare city for advanced air mobility

Wisk has part­nered with the city of Long Beach in Cal­i­for­nia through its Long Beach Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship (LBEP) to make advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) a real­i­ty in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia.

Through this part­ner­ship, the two organ­i­sa­tions will work to cre­ate an AAM work­ing group com­posed of busi­ness, local gov­ern­ment, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers that will focus on eval­u­at­ing, plan­ning, and imple­ment­ing AAM in Long Beach, with a focus on autonomous flight. Wisk and LBEP will co-chair the work­ing group for an ini­tial two-year term.

Gary Gysin, CEO of Wisk said: “We are excit­ed to work with the City of Long Beach and LBEP in this unique part­ner­ship. With its rich aero­space past, cur­rent resur­gence via Space Beach, and its cen­tral posi­tion in the LA Metro area, Long Beach is an ide­al city for all-elec­tric, autonomous urban flight oppor­tu­ni­ties.

“Through this part­ner­ship, Long Beach has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be one of the first cities to realise the eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of AAM, as well as to lead South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and the Unit­ed States, in autonomous, all-elec­tric AAM.”

The Long Beach Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship (LBEP) is the lead­ing eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment organ­i­sa­tion in the city. It is a non-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion formed to pro­mote, encour­age, and enhance the cre­ation of jobs and com­posed of lead­ers from pri­vate, pub­lic, aca­d­e­m­ic and phil­an­thropic sec­tors who are advanc­ing inno­v­a­tive indus­tries, attract­ing and grow­ing pri­vate invest­ment and pro­mot­ing Long Beach’s key eco­nom­ic assets.

Over the next two years, the work­ing group will exam­ine four key areas to eval­u­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ties and impacts that AAM rep­re­sents for Long Beach. These areas include an analy­sis of the eco­nom­ic impact and work­force devel­op­ment, com­mu­ni­ty accep­tance and out­reach, inte­gra­tion of autonomous AAM into city trans­porta­tion plans, and fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ment fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties.

With sup­port from Wisk, LBEP will coor­di­nate the devel­op­ment of an Eco­nom­ic Impact Study that will be con­duct­ed by the Cal State Long Beach (CSULB) Office of Eco­nom­ic Research. The study will esti­mate the annu­al eco­nom­ic impact of AAM oper­a­tions in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and oth­er region­al state economies. The results of the study are expect­ed to be com­plet­ed lat­er this year.

Long Beach May­or Robert Gar­cia said: “Aero­space inno­va­tion has always been a strong part of Long Beach his­to­ry. We have pro­duced some of the world’s most mod­ern air­craft, are lead­ing in the space econ­o­my, and will now be home to new tech­nolo­gies in Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty. We look for­ward to our part­ner­ship with Wisk and are proud of our local work­force who are edu­cat­ed, trained, and poised to make progress on these inno­va­tions.”

Ran­dal Her­nan­dez, co-chair of the work­ing group, imme­di­ate past chair of the Long Beach Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship and for­mer chair­man of the City of Long Beach’s Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion, added: “Long Beach has long been a cen­tre of aero­space cul­ture and capa­bil­i­ties. Autonomous, all-elec­tric AAM rep­re­sents the next rev­o­lu­tion in com­mer­cial avi­a­tion and promis­es sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits with min­i­mal envi­ron­men­tal impact.

“We are proud to part­ner with an AAM leader like Wisk to fur­ther explore the ben­e­fits that AAM can bring to the City of Long Beach, the south­ern Cal­i­for­nia region, and the state as a whole.”

Wisk is an inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny, backed by The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny and Kit­ty Hawk Cor­po­ra­tion, with more than a decade of expe­ri­ence and over 1,500 test flights. Since 2010, Wisk has designed, devel­oped, and test­ed five gen­er­a­tions of air­craft. It is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its sixth gen­er­a­tion autonomous eVTOL air­craft mod­el.