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Skyportz Sets Up Wilbur Air “to Operate Electric and Hybrid Aircraft in Australia”

Aus­tralian-based Sky­portz, a lead­ing ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture devel­op­er, has announced the set­ting up of Wilbur Air, a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary to oper­ate elec­tric and hybrid air­craft from its future net­work of ver­ti­ports, reports a press release. 

Wilbur Air is to have pri­or­i­ty access to the Sky­portz ver­ti­port loca­tions soon to be devel­oped around the coun­try. A range of air­craft part­ners will facil­i­tate every­thing from heavy lift­ing drone deliv­er­ies to short and long range pas­sen­ger trav­el.

The new com­pa­ny’s first col­lab­o­ra­tion is with U.S‑based Electra.Aero. Under this part­ner­ship, Wilbur will oper­ate the first 100 Elec­tra eSTOL air­craft in Aus­tralia.

Marc Aus­man, Electra’s Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer, com­ment­ed, “Our sus­tain­able eSTOL air­craft is per­fect­ly suit­ed for Aus­trali­a’s diverse geog­ra­phy, with its abil­i­ty to access short airstrips in both urban and remote areas, while offer­ing excep­tion­al oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy. We look for­ward to sup­port­ing Wilbur Air in enhanc­ing region­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship through­out Aus­tralia.”

Clem New­ton-Brown, Founder and CEO of Sky­portz and Wilbur Air, remarked, “Wilbur will be estab­lish­ing oper­a­tional part­ner­ships across Aus­tralia with exist­ing small char­ter and heli­copter com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in mov­ing into Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty and fly­ing under the Wilbur brand with pri­or­i­ty access to our Sky­portz ver­ti­ports.”

He con­tin­ued, “We see great poten­tial for the Elec­tra air­craft in Aus­tralia giv­en its unique long range capac­i­ty. We will have some fur­ther announce­ments soon regard­ing addi­tion­al air­crafts that will suit a range of uses that we intend to oper­ate”.

Sky­portz has been involved with the Aus­tralian Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) mar­ket dur­ing the last 5 years. Its focus is on break­ing the nexus between avi­a­tion and air­ports and enabling prop­er­ty own­ers to acti­vate their sites with ver­ti­ports.

New­ton-Brown con­tin­ued, “There is enor­mous inter­est from the prop­er­ty indus­try to help us break this nexus. In the future, com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al land­hold­ers could be able to estab­lish mini-air­ports and vertistops to become part of the Sky­portz net­work.”

He explained that investors who have backed OEMs (orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers) are now begin­ning to realise there has been under­in­vest­ment in the ecosys­tem that under­lies the promise of AAM on demand. “If all the air­craft do is fly from air­ports and heli­pads then there will be no rev­o­lu­tion. We need to start devel­op­ing ver­ti­ports in new loca­tions now,” point­ed out New­ton-Brown.

He added, “We are work­ing with Gov­ern­ments, air reg­u­la­tors and com­mu­ni­ties to estab­lish the para­me­ters for the intro­duc­tion of ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture and short take-off and land­ing run­ways”.

In addi­tion to devel­op­ing ver­ti­port sites in Aus­tralia, Sky­portz pro­vides con­sul­tan­cy and plan­ning ser­vices, as com­mu­ni­ties around the world gear up for this avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion.

The pri­ma­ry body for AAM in Aus­tralia has recent­ly released a roadmap set­ting out the time­lines for the growth of the indus­try.

Please Click Below

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qm5866cpp6be9tj7dmt0y/Australian-Vision-Document-2024.pdf?rlkey=o57dwmr1b610h7gwjedvh5f60&dl=0

Sky­portz is open­ing a fundrais­ing round this week on the Bir­chal Plat­form.

https://www.birchal.com/company/skyportz

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyportz.com

(Images: Sky­portz)

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