South Korea: Incheon Metropolitan City Partner with IAIAC and MITRE “to Unveil AAM Concept of Operations”

Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City, is part­ner­ing with the Insti­tute for Aero­space Indus­try-Acad­e­mia Col­lab­o­ra­tion (IAIAC) and MITRE Corps, to cre­ate “a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy for the suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion of AAM into Incheon’s trans­porta­tion net­work,” reports a press release.

Their Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (CONOPS) out­lines an approach to AAM inte­gra­tion, with a strong empha­sis on safe­ty, com­mu­ni­ty accep­tance and improved mobil­i­ty. The release says, “Incheon City’s wide-rang­ing fea­tures, includ­ing close island access, and major air­ports and ports, make the city’s AAM strat­e­gy valu­able as a poten­tial blue­print for oth­er munic­i­pal­i­ties.”

Jeong-bok Yoo, the Incheon May­or, com­ment­ed, “The inte­gra­tion of AAM oper­a­tions with­in the city, promis­es to trans­form our region’s trans­porta­tion land­scape. This CONOPS serves as a roadmap to that future, pri­ori­tis­ing safe­ty, com­mu­ni­ty accep­tance and improved mobil­i­ty.”

He con­tin­ued, “We aim to become a world leader in AAM oper­a­tions, enhanc­ing the qual­i­ty of life for our cit­i­zens, dri­ving eco­nom­ic growth, and pro­mot­ing envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

Jeong-bok Yoo

The CONOPS is the result of exten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion between Incheon City, its cit­i­zens, con­sor­tium part­ners, the nation­al gov­ern­ment, inter­na­tion­al part­ners, IAIAC and MITRE. “It out­lines an evo­lu­tion­ary growth path across three phas­es, from research, devel­op­ment, and demon­stra­tion, through to inte­gra­tion and ini­tial com­mer­cial deploy­ment,” explains the release. “And final­ly to mat­u­ra­tion and expan­sion.”

The doc­u­ment out­lines Incheon City’s objec­tives and pri­or­i­ties for AAM, includ­ing enabling res­i­dents of the Incheon islands to vis­it the main­land and return home with­in one day, while pro­vid­ing Incheon res­i­dents with a 30-minute trav­el option around the broad­er region.

Ker­ry Buck­ley, MITRE VP and direc­tor of the Cen­tre for Inte­grat­ed Trans­porta­tion, remarked,  “We are at the begin­ning of an evo­lu­tion­ary leap in air trans­porta­tion. Our work in the Repub­lic of Korea has appli­ca­tions in cities around the world and comes at a crit­i­cal junc­ture as the Unit­ed States is active­ly work­ing on inte­gra­tion of new entrants into the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem.”

Back­ground

Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City is a major port adja­cent to the West Sea, a part of the Yel­low Sea. It is South Kore­a’s third-largest metrop­o­lis, after Seoul and Busan. Incheon is a free eco­nom­ic zone; boasts an Inter­na­tion­al Air­port; and is a host for the Glob­al UAM Region­al Sum­mit.

 Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City (Credit:Wikipedia)

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.mitre.org/news-insights/publication/advanced-air-mobility-concept-operations-incheon-metropolitan-city

https://www.incheon.go.kr/en/index

(Top image: VoloC­i­ty Takes Off from Incheon Air­port)

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