Australia: Wisk, Skyports Broaden Collaboration, “Bring Autonomous Gen 6 eVTOL to South East Queensland”

Wisk Aero and Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture are broad­en­ing their col­lab­o­ra­tion by iden­ti­fy­ing an Entry-into-Ser­vice (EIS) net­work for Wisk’s autonomous Gen­er­a­tion 6 eVTOL in the South East Queens­land (SEQ) region of Aus­tralia, reports a press release.

This lat­est agree­ment builds on an exist­ing part­ner­ship announced in 2022, which marked the first col­lab­o­ra­tion between a ver­ti­port developer/operator and an autonomous eVTOL builder.

https://wisk.aero/news/press-release/wisk-skyports-partnership-conops/

The new part­ner­ship fur­thers Wisk’s work with the SEQ Coun­cil of May­ors, to intro­duce a safe, sus­tain­able and scal­able autonomous air taxi ser­vice to South East Queens­land. The two com­pa­nies will col­lab­o­rate to deter­mine loca­tions for a viable ver­ti­port net­work.

Bri­an Yutko, CEO of Wisk, com­ment­ed, “Wisk is com­mit­ted to bring­ing safe, emis­sions-free avi­a­tion to Queens­land, and this part­ner­ship will get us one step clos­er to mak­ing our goal a real­i­ty.” 

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, added, “This col­lab­o­ra­tion will lever­age our com­bined exper­tise to devel­op a robust, scal­able infra­struc­ture net­work to enable safe, effi­cient air taxi ser­vices for com­mu­ni­ties and vis­i­tors across the South East Queens­land region.”

The two com­pa­nies “will under­take a com­plex analy­sis of region­al trav­el pat­terns, iden­ti­fy can­di­date ver­ti­port sites, con­duct fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies, and engage with prospec­tive land­lords and near­by com­mu­ni­ties, “ explains the release. “This last step is vital to the suc­cess­ful intro­duc­tion of Wisk’s urban air taxi ser­vice. The ulti­mate goal of this project is the devel­op­ment of a thor­ough busi­ness case to sup­port the devel­op­ment of the nec­es­sary ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture.” 

Wisk Aero Gen­er­a­tion 6 eVTOL (Cred­it: Wisk)

SEQ is home to 4 mil­lion peo­ple and over the next 20 years the region will increase in pop­u­la­tion to 6 mil­lion. The region is under­go­ing rapid and exten­sive devel­op­ment ahead of the Bris­bane 2032 Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games. The part­ner­ship will iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties for the safe devel­op­ment and scale-up of AAM ser­vices to com­ple­ment oth­er trans­port invest­ments, sup­port tourism, and con­nect com­mu­ni­ties across the region.  

Scott Smith, CEO of Coun­cil of May­ors (SEQ) said, “The Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty sec­tor is an excit­ing new devel­op­ment for South East Queens­land and is expect­ed to con­tribute over USD66 bil­lion to the econ­o­my, or 3.1 per­cent of nation­al GDP, by 2040. We’re excit­ed to see this evolv­ing indus­try bring high-val­ue local jobs to SEQ and sup­port improved ser­vices like med­ical and tourism.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://wisk.aero/

https://skyports.net/

(Top image: Cred­it — Wisk Aero)

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