UK: Advanced Mobility Ecosystem Consortium provides progress update on bringing AAM closer to reality

The Advanced Mobil­i­ty Ecosys­tem Con­sor­tium con­tin­ues to make sig­nif­i­cant strides in its mis­sion to demon­strate the com­mer­cial and oper­a­tional via­bil­i­ty of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) in the Unit­ed King­dom.

As we move through 2024, the Con­sor­tium’s diverse group of avi­a­tion indus­try lead­ers is work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to bring the vision of eVTOL air­craft oper­a­tions clos­er to real­i­ty.

The Con­sor­tium, backed by a £9.5 mil­lion grant from the UK Gov­ern­men­t’s Future Flight Chal­lenge, brings togeth­er Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Atkin­sRéalis, Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture, NATS, Con­nect­ed Places Cat­a­pult, Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty, and WMG, Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick.

The Con­sor­tium’s goal is to cre­ate a first-of-its-kind ecosys­tem that will accel­er­ate the intro­duc­tion of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in the UK, poten­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing urban and region­al trans­porta­tion.

Build­ing the foun­da­tion for ver­ti­port oper­a­tions

Sky­ports has made con­sid­er­able progress in devel­op­ing the UK’s first ver­ti­port test­bed at Bices­ter Motion, Oxford­shire. This strate­gic loca­tion, approx­i­mate­ly an hour and 40 min­utes’ dri­ve from cen­tral Lon­don, will serve as a cru­cial facil­i­ty for test­ing ground infra­struc­ture and flight oper­a­tions.

The 160 sqm pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal will allow Sky­ports to refine var­i­ous aspects of AAM oper­a­tions, includ­ing pas­sen­ger jour­neys, safe­ty pro­ce­dures, and staffing require­ments. The ver­ti­port will be equipped with one eVTOL stand and a land­ing area, enabling com­pre­hen­sive test­ing of ground oper­a­tions and air­craft inte­gra­tion.

Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty has helped to shape infra­struc­ture require­ments, ensur­ing the effi­cient inte­gra­tion of land­ing pads, air­craft park­ing, and pas­sen­ger facil­i­ties. Ver­ti­cal intends to con­duct demon­stra­tion flights and test key pro­ce­dures at Bices­ter ahead of com­mer­cial launch.

Sky­ports is also mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant head­way in devel­op­ing essen­tial dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture. The com­pa­ny is near­ing com­ple­tion of its Resource Man­age­ment and Sched­ul­ing Sys­tem (RMSS) and is now focus­ing on inte­grat­ing this sys­tem with NATS’ air traf­fic man­age­ment.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Sky­ports is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Con­sor­tium part­ners on cru­cial work­streams, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of eVTOL res­cue and fire­fight­ing pro­to­cols, plan­ning and reg­u­la­tion best prac­tices for UK ver­ti­port net­works, and explor­ing opti­mal loca­tions for ver­ti­ports at the UK’s major air­ports.

Advanc­ing air­craft tech­nol­o­gy

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space reached a piv­otal mile­stone this month with the assem­bly of its most advanced and pow­er­ful full-scale VX4 pro­to­type. Built in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Tier 1 avi­a­tion part­ners, this new pro­to­type incor­po­rates Ver­ti­cal’s pro­pri­etary bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy and lat­est pro­peller designs.

The air­craft is under­go­ing test­ing at Ver­ti­cal’s flight test cen­tre at Cotswolds Air­port, Kem­ble, with a focus on achiev­ing pilot­ed flight ahead of planned pub­lic demon­stra­tions with Con­sor­tium part­ners.

Rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing air­space man­age­ment

NATS has devel­oped a ground­break­ing con­cept of oper­a­tions for air­space man­age­ment in the AAM ecosys­tem. This inno­v­a­tive approach, suc­cess­ful­ly sim­u­lat­ed in Decem­ber 2023, utilis­es new appli­ca­tions that stream­line flight plan­ning and decon­flic­tion process­es.

The ‘Air­space Man­ag­er’ func­tion, oper­at­ing from a dig­i­tal ‘mas­ter con­trol room’, ensures safe­ty and effi­cien­cy with­out adding to the work­load of air traf­fic con­trollers or pilots.

This con­cept not only facil­i­tates the inte­gra­tion of eVTOLs into exist­ing air­space but also opens up oppor­tu­ni­ties for region­al air­ports to become mixed-use ‘ver­ti­ports’, poten­tial­ly cre­at­ing new rev­enue streams and diver­si­fi­ca­tion options.

Addi­tion­al­ly, aca­d­e­mics at Cran­field are work­ing along­side NATS to devel­op net­works’ topol­o­gy and net­work effi­cien­cies for a net­work of ver­ti­ports.

Pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence and mar­ket insights

Atkin­sRéalis has devel­oped a bio­met­ri­cal­ly enabled pas­sen­ger iden­ti­ty man­age­ment sys­tem, tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly for ver­ti­port appli­ca­tions.

Lever­ag­ing its expe­ri­ence deliv­er­ing pas­sen­ger pro­cess­ing tech­nol­o­gy at promi­nent air­ports includ­ing Heathrow, Atkin­sRéalis’ sys­tem inte­grates bespoke hard­ware, includ­ing cam­eras and gates to effi­cient­ly iden­ti­fy and val­i­date pas­sen­gers.

Designed to seam­less­ly inte­grate with resource man­age­ment and sched­ul­ing sys­tems, it forms a cru­cial part of the over­all pas­sen­ger jour­ney and con­cept of oper­a­tions for AAM.

The devel­op­ment has been informed by close­ly work­ing with Sky­ports, eVTOL oper­a­tors, and diverse pas­sen­ger focus groups, includ­ing dis­abil­i­ty advo­cates in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Con­nect­ed Places Cat­a­pult (CPC), ensur­ing an inclu­sive and effi­cient AAM ser­vice.

CPC has con­tributed insights through its work on mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion, demand mod­el­ling, and pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence. Its research sug­gests that ini­tial eVTOL ser­vices may ini­tial­ly cater to high­er-income seg­ments, with a grad­ual adop­tion time­line pro­ject­ed over the com­ing years.

Final­ly, to address the unique chal­lenge of devel­op­ing ver­ti­ports in the cur­rent plan­ning sys­tem, CPC exam­ined com­pre­hen­sive route map­ping and informed plan­ning appli­ca­tions.

Look­ing ahead

The Con­sor­tium is mov­ing clos­er to planned demon­stra­tion flights, includ­ing at the Bices­ter Motion ver­ti­port test­bed and a sep­a­rate flight from Farn­bor­ough to Heathrow.

The Consortium’s progress rep­re­sents a leap for­ward in the UK’s pur­suit of green­er, more effi­cient air trav­el. By bring­ing togeth­er exper­tise from across the avi­a­tion indus­try and fos­ter­ing inno­va­tion in tech­nol­o­gy, infra­struc­ture, and oper­a­tions, the Con­sor­tium is lay­ing the ground­work for a new era of urban and region­al air mobil­i­ty.

The work of the Con­sor­tium not only posi­tions the UK at the fore­front of this rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nol­o­gy, but also promis­es to deliv­er sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits in terms of con­nec­tiv­i­ty, eco­nom­ic growth, and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The com­ing months will be cru­cial, as the Con­sor­tium moves from con­cept to real-world demon­stra­tion, bring­ing the vision of advanced air mobil­i­ty clos­er to real­i­ty.

More infor­ma­tion can be found on the Advanced Mobil­i­ty Ecosys­tem Con­sor­tium web­site.