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Sky­portz has been announced as ‘Start-up of the Year’ final­ist in the Aus­tralian Avi­a­tion Awards for its work in devel­op­ing the land­ing infra­struc­ture prop­er­ty part­ner­ships in advance of the intro­duc­tion of elec­tric air taxis.

With over 400 sites ready to acti­vate when rules and reg­u­la­tions per­mit, the Aus­tralian Avi­a­tion Awards recog­nis­es the lead­ing pro­fes­sion­als and busi­ness­es in the avi­a­tion com­mu­ni­ty across Aus­tralia.

Aus­tralian Aviation’s Adam Thorn said: “The awards are regard­ed as one of the avi­a­tion profession’s most pres­ti­gious acco­lades, recog­nis­ing pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment and show­cas­ing indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es lead­ing the way in the indus­try.”

Sky­portz aims to assem­ble all the pieces of the puz­zle to attract air taxi oper­a­tors to their ver­ti­port net­work, and CEO Clem New­ton-Brown does not have an avi­a­tion back­ground, but his skills as a plan­ning lawyer and for­mer Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and Deputy Lord May­or of Mel­bourne have all played a part in Skyportz’s suc­cess in mov­ing the air taxi indus­try for­ward.

He com­ment­ed: “Our focus has been ini­tial­ly on help­ing to devel­op the polit­i­cal sup­port for this emerg­ing indus­try and there is no doubt now that all lev­els of Gov­ern­ment and our air reg­u­la­tors are prepar­ing Aus­tralia for this new era in clean, qui­et avi­a­tion.

“The next step is for our politi­cians and reg­u­la­tors to break the nexus between avi­a­tion and air­ports to enable our prop­er­ty part­ners to acti­vate their sites with ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture.

“We can offer sol­id sup­port for new entrants, a benign oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment, proac­tive reg­u­la­tors and a ready made net­work of prop­er­ty part­ners to get this indus­try off the ground.

“Over $10 bil­lion was invest­ed into the air­craft fron­trun­ners last year. The first juris­dic­tions to suc­cess­ful­ly attract these air­craft for an air taxi launch will be the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of mas­sive invest­ment.”

In late March, Sky­portz, Sea World Heli­copters, Secure Park­ing and Gold Coast May­or Tom Tate joined forces to make SE Queens­land the cen­tre of the emerg­ing elec­tric air taxi indus­try in Aus­tralia, in time for the Bris­bane Olympics.

In Jan­u­ary, Sky­portz announced a part­ner­ship with Secure Park­ing to deliv­er up to 400 land­ing sites for eVTOL air­craft in Aus­tralia.