Wisk and Skyports to release first-of-its-kind concept of operations for autonomous advanced air mobility

Wisk Aero and Sky­ports are part­ner­ing to inte­grate autonomous eVTOL air­craft oper­a­tions at ver­ti­ports, in what is said to mark the first col­lab­o­ra­tion between a ver­ti­port devel­op­er and an autonomous eVTOL devel­op­er in the USA. 

The part­ner­ship is eval­u­at­ing a host of core areas, includ­ing phys­i­cal air­craft func­tions, capa­bil­i­ties, require­ments, inter­faces, and sup­port. Addi­tion­al­ly, it will also look at pas­sen­ger accom­mo­da­tion, sched­ule man­age­ment, ground oper­a­tions man­age­ment, final approach and take­off man­age­ment, nav­i­ga­tion­al aids, sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness, con­tin­gency man­age­ment and air­space design.

A first-of-its-kind Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (ConOps) has also been released, which iden­ti­fies how autonomous eVTOL air­craft and oper­a­tors will inte­grate with ver­ti­ports, and also defines the jour­ney of an autonomous eVTOL air­craft in its rela­tion­ship to UAM-spe­cif­ic infra­struc­ture.

“We are excit­ed to part­ner with Sky­ports, a leader in ver­ti­ports and AAM infra­struc­ture, and it is crit­i­cal that future oper­a­tions are autonomous for safe­ty, scal­a­bil­i­ty, and afford­abil­i­ty,” said Gary Gysin, CEO of Wisk. 

“With this ConOps, Wisk and Sky­ports are help­ing to define those future oper­a­tions while ensur­ing the long-term suc­cess and full poten­tial of this indus­try.”

The announce­ment and ConOps high­lights the crit­i­cal impor­tance of eval­u­at­ing oper­a­tional con­sid­er­a­tions for infra­struc­ture and oth­er ecosys­tem ele­ments as the indus­try approach­es the launch of both pilot­ed and autonomous oper­a­tions.

While AAM ser­vices will ini­tial­ly launch with pilot­ed vehi­cles, Wisk and Sky­ports recog­nise that auton­o­my is key to unlock­ing the scal­a­bil­i­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty, and afford­abil­i­ty need­ed to realise AAM’s full mar­ket poten­tial. 

“It is impor­tant that infra­struc­ture built today can accom­mo­date the air­craft of tomor­row, and we are thrilled to be part­nered with Wisk as they push the bounds of air­craft sys­tems inno­va­tion,” added Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports.

“The ConOps and our con­tin­ued work on the devel­op­ment of ver­ti­ports and ground-based infra­struc­ture will ensure that this indus­try is well pre­pared to safe­ly inte­grate autonomous oper­a­tions in the future.”

In Feb­ru­ary, Wisk part­nered with the city of Long Beach in Cal­i­for­nia, through its Long Beach Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship, to co-chair an AAM work­ing group for an ini­tial two-year term to focus on eval­u­at­ing, plan­ning, and imple­ment­ing autonomous flight AAM.

Last month, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty formed a con­sor­tium fea­tur­ing Sky­ports, L3Harris Tech­nolo­gies and the Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive to devel­op a ConOps for ser­vices between Mia­mi Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (MIA) and the Mia­mi Beach Con­ven­tion Cen­tre.