Skyscape unveils blueprint for its first vertiport facility in Japan, to continue industry development within Asia-Pacific region

Japan­ese ver­ti­port start­up Sky­scape has revealed excit­ing new plans to devel­op a ‘Inte­grat­ed Avi­a­tion Cen­tre’ or ‘IAC’, which will become one of the first ver­ti­port facil­i­ties in the coun­try.

The com­pa­ny, led by pres­i­dent and founder Asa Que­sen­ber­ry, wants to cre­ate infra­struc­ture for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty that pro­vides ‘real val­ue to soci­ety’. 

In an effort to push the indus­try for­ward in Japan, it has laid out a plan to utilise a 67,000 sq. m. site as a cen­tre for test­ing the many inno­v­a­tive ideas relat­ed to AAM and ver­ti­port devel­op­ment in the Asia-Pacif­ic region.

Planned ser­vices at the IAC include tourism/leisure flights, emer­gency response, drone car­go ser­vices, eVTOL air­craft test­ing and demon­stra­tions, heli­copter ser­vices and a showcase/workshop cen­tre.

Reveal­ing the news exclu­sive­ly at eVTOL Insights’ Sin­ga­pore con­fer­ence last month, Que­sen­ber­ry said: “The facil­i­ty will focus on pro­vid­ing a vari­ety of ser­vices that allow for engage­ment with the pub­lic and local com­mu­ni­ty, to edu­cate and demon­strate the val­ue of AAM. While at the same time pro­vid­ing a vari­ety of ser­vices to the region­al AAM indus­try, val­i­dat­ing con­cepts, tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness mod­els.

“The IAC is focused on cre­at­ing a space with­in the APAC region where the indus­try and pub­lic can come togeth­er to val­i­date ideas, tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness mod­els relat­ed to AAM. We are focused on the fol­low­ing three core val­ues for the site: Edu­ca­tion, Ser­vice and Engage­ment.”

When oper­a­tional, the com­plet­ed site will fea­ture a main­te­nance hangar, which will allow Sky­scape to sup­port air­craft stor­age for its clients, as well as giv­ing part­ners a loca­tion for air­craft ser­vic­ing and mod­i­fi­ca­tions. 

A ‘ver­ti­port’ lab will enable the test­ing and demon­stra­tion of a vari­ety of hard­ware and soft­ware, co-ordi­nate var­i­ous AAM flight ser­vices and sup­port air taxi oper­a­tions in the future. Plans are also being made to sup­port air­craft charg­ing.

There will also be a show­room space, allow­ing the venue to host events, pub­lic and indus­try work­shops, as well as show­cas­ing client air­craft for future sales. An airstrip will pro­vide fur­ther sup­port to emer­gency ser­vices with­in the region and enable demo test flights to take place.

The exact loca­tion and timescale of the build are yet to be revealed, but it is hoped this new site will be ready and in oper­a­tion as the indus­try begins com­mer­cial air taxi ser­vices.

For more infor­ma­tion about Sky­scape and its work in Japan, please vis­it https://skyscape.site/

Above are ren­der­ings of what Sky­scape’s Inte­grat­ed Avi­a­tion Cen­tre, or IAC, could look like when oper­a­tional. Pic­ture cred­its: Sky­scape Japan.