Australia: Vertiport Concepts “Shaping Up for Electric Air Taxis”

With the Olympic Games set to be host­ed by Bris­bane in 2032, along­side strong sup­port from all lev­els of the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to devel­op Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM), the coun­try is shap­ing up as an impor­tant launch mar­ket for elec­tric air taxis, reports a press release.

Ver­ti­port devel­op­er, Sky­portz, has released this week images for river­front con­cepts on the Bris­bane Riv­er at the annu­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Sum­mit on the Gold Coast. The two-day event begins today (June 4th) and is held at the ACV Roy­al Pines Resort.

AAM com­pa­nies involved include Wisk, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty, Sky­ports and Sky­portz, Tex­tron, Air­bus and Thales.

https://www.aaus.org.au/eventdetails/21463/aam-summit-2024

Clem New­ton-Brown, Founder and CEO of Sky­portz, com­ment­ed, “We believe that the low­est hang­ing fruit for retro­fitting ver­ti­ports into urban areas are nat­ur­al avi­a­tion cor­ri­dors such as rivers. While there are a small num­ber of cities around the world that have devel­oped rooftop heli­pads, they are not the eas­i­est places to safe­ly land air­craft. There are usu­al­ly bet­ter options, par­tic­u­lar­ly in water­front cities.”

Poten­tial ver­ti­port designs have been pro­duced along­side Con­tr­eras Earl Archi­tec­ture, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with UK firms Pascall+Watson and Min­mud. Sky­portz has been also work­ing with for­mer Aus­tralian Sci­en­tist of the Year, Abdul­ghani Mohamed, on wind and tur­bu­lence mod­el­ling in cities and tri­alling spe­cif­ic sites.

New­ton-Brown added, “We keep com­ing back to water­front loca­tions as being the safest and most log­i­cal place to install new ver­ti­ports in large cities when it comes to tur­bu­lence.”

In his pre­sen­ta­tion to the sum­mit, New­ton-Brown iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing ben­e­fits of water­front ver­ti­ports.

: Access to sites that are scarce in urban envi­ron­ments.

: Gov­ern­ment leas­es rather than pur­chas­ing expen­sive land.

: Clear approach and depar­ture paths above the water.

: Lit­tle chance of los­ing avi­a­tion cor­ri­dors due to sub­se­quent devel­op­ment.

: Less wind tur­bu­lence com­pared to cen­tral CBD.

: More pre­dictable air­flows.

Sky­portz focus is on break­ing the nexus between avi­a­tion and air­ports and enabling prop­er­ty own­ers to acti­vate their sites with ver­ti­ports.

Clem New­ton-Brown Speak­ing at LEAP24 in Riyadh, Sau­di Ara­bia (Cred­it: Sky­portz)

The Aus­tralian air reg­u­la­tor, CASA, also released today at the Gold Coast Sum­mit, ver­ti­port guide­lines sig­nalling a com­mit­ment to facil­i­tate AAM in Aus­tralia. These guide­lines envis­age new ver­ti­ports exclud­ing heli­copters, so as to assist with devel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ty sup­port.

https://www.casa.gov.au/resources-and-education/publications/guide-vertiport-design

A CASA spokesper­son explained, “This will give the AAM indus­try an oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate to the com­mu­ni­ty that a ver­ti­port may be more desir­able than a heli­port. If com­mu­ni­ties are going to accept it as an indus­try, then gain­ing this ‘social licence’ is very impor­tant.”

Adding, “With the guid­ance for ver­ti­ports clear­ly exclud­ing the use of heli­copters, then we hope that local coun­cils and com­mu­ni­ties will be more accept­ing to AAM in their local­i­ties.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://skyportz.com/

(Images: Con­tr­eras Earl Archi­tec­ture, Pascall+Watson, Min­mud)

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