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Mott MacDonald and UrbanV to jointly develop Vertiports

Mott Mac­Don­ald and UrbanV will devel­op an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) infra­struc­ture by iden­ti­fy­ing and explor­ing viable oppor­tu­ni­ties for project devel­op­ment world­wide.

The com­pa­nies will assess the fea­si­bil­i­ty and scope for coop­er­a­tion on world­wide projects in air­ports, ver­ti­ports and AAM, and iden­ti­fy geo­gra­phies and part­ner­ships.

Mott Mac­Don­ald is one of the world’s most expe­ri­enced avi­a­tion con­sul­tan­cies, pro­vid­ing ser­vices from mas­ter plan­ning and busi­ness case devel­op­ment through to design, deliv­ery man­age­ment and busi­ness change.

UrbanV launch­es AAM com­mer­cial net­works start­ing with Rome, where it plans to enable the first route from Fiu­mi­ci­no Air­port to Rome City Cen­tre by the end of 2024.

Mott Mac­Don­ald project prin­ci­pal Hora­cio Rossi said: “With more than 40 years’ expe­ri­ence in the avi­a­tion sec­tor and deliv­er­ing more than 1000 projects, we now help to realise the poten­tial of AAM.

“Our team has expe­ri­ence of devel­op­ing the strate­gic direc­tion for ver­ti­ports, through to mas­ter­plans for its size, ter­mi­nal build­ings, ener­gy cen­tre, air­field lay­out, and safe and effi­cient oper­a­tions, as well as con­nec­tions with oth­er modes of trans­port, and we can­not wait to work togeth­er with UrbanV to devel­op oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

UrbanV CEO Car­lo Tur­si added: “At UrbanV, we aim to improve people’s lives by enabling a fast, effi­cient, safe and clean alter­na­tive to exist­ing trans­port solu­tions for peo­ple and goods over short dis­tances, by air.

“We have the ambi­tion to become a major glob­al oper­a­tor of ver­ti­port net­works, start­ing from Italy and France, where we are work­ing togeth­er with our found­ing share­hold­ers to estab­lish some of the first AAM routes world­wide. We are excit­ed to part­ner with Mott Mac­Don­ald and we look for­ward to devel­op­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties togeth­er with them, on a glob­al scale.”

Mott Mac­Don­ald is already work­ing across the world on sev­er­al AAM projects. It devel­oped a glob­al ver­ti­port play­book includ­ing the strate­gic con­cept, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and designs of ver­ti­port ter­mi­nals. It has also sup­port­ed a con­sor­tium plan­ning a net­work of at least 25 ver­ti­ports in the UK, help­ing devel­op the con­cept of oper­a­tions, design and engi­neer­ing com­po­nents.

The glob­al advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket size was val­ued at USD 8.93 bil­lion in 2022 and is pro­ject­ed to be worth around USD 45.12 bil­lion by 2030, accord­ing to a study by Prece­dence Research.

In June, SITA, the lead­ing IT provider to the air trans­port indus­try, and UrbanV began to devel­op a dig­i­tal-first pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence for UrbanV’s ver­ti­ports in Rome due to start oper­a­tions in 2024.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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