Interview with Skyports Communications Manager, Maggie Mullan, about Potential Vero Beach Vertiport in Florida

Lau­rence Reis­man is an expe­ri­enced jour­nal­ist who works for Trea­sure Coast News­pa­pers. A dig­i­tal news site that is the largest dai­ly south­east­ern Flori­da media oper­a­tion in the region, encom­pass­ing three coastal coun­ties: Mar­tin, St. Lucie and Indi­an Riv­er. Reis­man lives in the city of Vero Beach, Flori­da.

He hears that UK-based Sky­ports is plan­ning to con­struct a ver­ti­port in Vero Beach after being told by the city’s Air­port Direc­tor, Todd Sch­er, that “a British com­pa­ny is sign­ing a Let­ter of Intent (LOI) to lease land there.”

Lau­rence Reis­man

Reis­man is excit­ed by the prospect. His nat­ur­al jour­nal­ist instinct is to con­tact Sky­ports and find out more about this poten­tial project. He con­tacts the PR and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er, Mag­gie Mul­lan. Below is an inter­view that fol­lowed.

---

What exact­ly would you hope your ver­ti­port could serve? Air taxis, per­son­al units, etc.?

Sky­ports will build and oper­ate a ver­ti­port serv­ing pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) vehi­cles. We are an agnos­tic ver­ti­port oper­a­tor, which means we design our infra­struc­ture to meet the require­ments (charg­ing, land­ing, taxi­ing) of each of the eVTOL manufacturers/operators that land at our ver­ti­ports.

We’re prepar­ing for com­mer­cial launch in the mid to late 2020s, with even­tu­al routes like­ly to include West Palm Beach, Stu­art, Orlan­do, and Mel­bourne ― among oth­ers as the net­work grows. As bat­tery tech­nolo­gies increase, the dis­tance Vero Beach res­i­dents will be able to trav­el will expand.

When might it be oper­a­tional?

The indus­try is depen­dent on Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing eVTOLs and an oper­a­tor sched­ul­ing flights to and from Vero Beach. It is Sky­ports Infrastructure’s hope to be oper­a­tion at Vero Beach in the late 2020s.

What might the invest­ment be?

An esti­mat­ed invest­ment in the infra­struc­ture will be between $5 mil­lion and $10 mil­lion. We plan to phase our ver­ti­port devel­op­ment to meet con­sumer and oper­a­tor demand. The site we are leas­ing has ample room to grow with the Vero Beach mar­ket.

It’s impor­tant to us that our designs fit in with the local envi­ron­ment as we want to be a wel­come addi­tion to neigh­bor­hoods. We work close­ly with local stake­hold­ers in each of the loca­tions, and mak­ing sure the design of our infra­struc­ture is in keep­ing with local require­ments, is safe and acces­si­ble, is a key fac­tor in this. 

Do you build just ver­ti­ports or fly­ing machines? Who flies the machines that would enter the ver­ti­port (self-dri­ven, drone oper­a­tors, pilots)?

We build and oper­ate both ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture and the tech­nol­o­gy that enables them, such as pas­sen­ger pro­cess­ing sys­tems, ground equip­ment resourc­ing, vehi­cle inte­gra­tion, charg­ing, and sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness. We part­ner with lead­ing air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers, such as Joby Avi­a­tion and Volo­copter, to devel­op and build ground infra­struc­ture from where eVTOL air­craft will take off and land.

Our mod­el is much like a stan­dard air­port, but on a small­er scale that is designed for fast through­put and effi­cien­cy. If you think of Mia­mi, for exam­ple, there is a sin­gle inter­na­tion­al air­port in a pref­er­en­tial loca­tion which serves dif­fer­ent oper­a­tors (e.g., Delta, Amer­i­can Air­lines, Unit­ed), it inte­grates with dif­fer­ent air­craft makes and mod­els (Boe­ing, Air­bus etc.), and oper­ates routes based on pas­sen­ger demand.

The oper­a­tor of the vehi­cles will vary ― some man­u­fac­tur­ers are fol­low­ing the owner/operator mod­el, while oth­ers will sell or lease their vehi­cles to oper­a­tors. For the first years of oper­a­tion, flights will be pilot­ed, but as the indus­try, reg­u­la­tion and tech­nol­o­gy devel­ops, the long-term goal is autonomous flight. We’re a way off from that at the moment, though.

How do ver­ti­ports inter­act with gen­er­al avi­a­tion?

Ver­ti­ports add addi­tion­al nodes to a mul­ti­modal trans­port net­work. An eVTOL ser­vice between a ver­ti­port and gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­port increas­es con­nec­tiv­i­ty between key loca­tions and can help to ease con­ges­tion and improve access. Gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­ports can also serve as ver­ti­ports with addi­tion­al facil­i­ties such as main­te­nance, charg­ing infra­struc­ture or hangar space.

eVTOLs and ver­ti­ports will inte­grate into the exist­ing nation­al air­space sys­tem and fol­low the same rules as gen­er­al avi­a­tion traf­fic. We believe that eVTOLs will ulti­mate­ly com­ple­ment gen­er­al avi­a­tion, expand­ing access and inspir­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of avi­a­tors.

What might it look like?

See some of the attach­ments I’ve sent.

I shared a ren­der for a site at Dubai Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. We’re work­ing with the Dubai Roads and Trans­port Author­i­ty at the moment to devel­op plans, and had our ini­tial con­cept approved and endorsed by His High­ness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Mak­toum ear­li­er this year. We’re work­ing on four sites there at the moment and we’re very much in the thick of it with plan­ning and design.

Sky­ports is work­ing with Dubai Roads and Trans­port Author­i­ty to con­struct a ver­ti­port site at Dubai Inter­na­tion­al Air­port

Do you have any oper­a­tional ver­ti­ports?

There are no com­mer­cial­ly oper­a­tional ver­ti­ports at present, how­ev­er, we do have two sites oper­a­tional for test­ing.
We launched our Euro­pean test­bed in Paris in Novem­ber, where we com­plete live flight test­ing, vehi­cle inte­gra­tion, resource man­age­ment and sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness among oth­er things.

We also have a site in Mari­na, Cal­i­for­nia, which we opened in Octo­ber. This is locat­ed at the Joby Avi­a­tion test­ing site and is used for test­ing inte­gra­tion, pas­sen­ger flow, pub­lic engage­ment. In addi­tion, we oper­ate Sky­ports Lon­don Heli­port, one of two com­mer­cial heli­ports in Lon­don, which we use for test­ing of our tech­nol­o­gy in a live flight envi­ron­ment.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://skyports.net

(News Source: https://eu.tcpalm.com/)

(Images: Sky­ports)