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Major New Report: “World is Planning Construction of 1,044 Vertiports by 2028”

Urbanairmobilitynews.com recent­ly pub­lished a com­pre­hen­sive report look­ing at the devel­op­ment of glob­al ver­ti­ports over the com­ing years. The infor­ma­tion revealed is intrigu­ing to say the least.

Accord­ing to the Report enti­tled The glob­al ver­ti­port mar­ket map and fore­cast 2024–2028, com­piled by the Glob­al AAM/UAM Mar­ket Map research team, there are cur­rent­ly 1,044 ver­ti­ports planned for devel­op­ment glob­al­ly between 2024 and 2028.

Of these projects, 366 have been con­tract­ed to named sup­pli­ers, although not all may come to fruition. A fea­ture post­ed on the urbanairmobilitynews.com, explains that “The lengthy and com­plex process of devel­op­ing avi­a­tion facil­i­ties in areas which, until now, have been used for very dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es, plus fail­ures among eVTOL OEMs and reg­u­la­to­ry block­ages, will mean the most like­ly num­ber of ver­ti­ports in oper­a­tion around the world by the end of 2028 will be clos­er to 620.” It adds, “This is still a huge fig­ure, giv­en in 2024, it is like­ly that just 24 ver­ti­ports will be com­plet­ed glob­al­ly.“

Chi­na is lead­ing the way, where ver­ti­port foun­da­tions are under­way for net­works across the coun­try, to meet expec­ta­tions of the cen­tral government’s low alti­tude econ­o­my strat­e­gy. Over 100 ver­ti­ports are planned to be con­struct­ed in the Guang­dong province by 2027 alone.

The arti­cle con­tin­ues, “In lega­cy aero­space indus­try regions such as Europe and North Amer­i­ca, there is a broad 50/50 per­cent split between urban and avi­a­tion-based loca­tions; else­where in the world the demand for ver­ti­ports is over­whelm­ing­ly in city cen­tres or on water­front loca­tions.”

(Cred­it: urbanairmobilitynews.com)

Geo­graph­i­cal vari­a­tions can play a major role in the type and costs for con­struc­tion and out­fit­ting. For exam­ple, in Aus­trala­sia, a high per­cent­age of first gen­er­a­tion ver­ti­ports will be air­port-based and of mod­u­lar, low-cost designs, while in the Mid­dle East the devel­op­ments planned are more exten­sive and com­plex, with sev­er­al major hubs planned that include mul­ti­ple land­ing and take-off areas.

The arti­cle goes on, “Dur­ing the last 12 months there has been an impor­tant move in the indus­try to devel­op new low-cost, mod­u­lar ver­ti­port con­cepts, with com­pa­nies offer­ing entry-lev­el con­cepts from just USD108,000. In many parts of the world cen­tral gov­ern­ment is invest­ing heav­i­ly in first gen­er­a­tion ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture. Japan’s trans­port min­istry is sub­si­dis­ing the con­struc­tion costs of the country’s first ver­ti­ports built by local gov­ern­ments and pri­vate com­pa­nies. The min­istry will cov­er up to 50 per­cent of con­struc­tion expens­es, with a cap of ¥50 mil­lion (USD313,500) per site.”

So, how many ver­ti­ports may a large city need?

Accord­ing to research com­pa­ny, McK­in­sey, “For large, dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed cities, there could be rough­ly 85 to 100 take­off and land­ing pads… Build­ing this infra­struc­ture net­work would cost approx­i­mate­ly USD35 to USD45 mil­lion, with annu­al oper­at­ing costs of around USD110 to USD130 mil­lion.

“In medi­um-size, less dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed cities, there would be around 38 to 65 take­off and land­ing pads, includ­ing the fol­low­ing: ver­ti­hubs at one major air­port and one or two city loca­tions; five to ten vert­ibas­es to han­dle work­place com­mutes and retail dis­tricts; three to five ver­ti­pads near sub­ur­ban com­mute sta­tions. Build­ing this infra­struc­ture net­work would cost between USD15 and USD20 mil­lion, with annu­al oper­at­ing costs rang­ing from USD35 to USD50 mil­lion per year.”

Poten­tial Dif­fer­ent Ver­ti­port Con­cepts for Asia (Cred­it: Hyundai)

The Demand and Capac­i­ty Opti­mi­sa­tion for U‑space pro­gram (DACUS project) has esti­mat­ed how many take-off and land­ing areas (TOLAs) might be need­ed in Europe, over the next 10 to 15 years, for drones and pas­sen­ger car­ry­ing vehi­cles.

This par­tic­u­lar Report states, “As a test case we applied the cal­cu­la­tion to the pop­u­la­tion that is liv­ing in the met­ro­pol­i­tan area of Toulouse (about 1.2 mil­lion peo­ple). In total a num­ber of rough­ly 350 to 450 sta­tion­ary TOLAs can be expect­ed there.”

It sug­gests an aver­age of one TOLA for each 3,000 res­i­dents in Euro­pean urban areas, based on the Toulouse case, could be required by 2036. The Report also looks at TOLA require­ments for Madrid and Frank­furt.

In the U.S, there are around 100 ver­ti­ports either active­ly planned or inferred for devel­op­ment. Most recent­ly, there has been a flur­ry of com­pet­ing AAM net­works announced for the San Fran­cis­co Bay area. Whether these facil­i­ties will be for gen­er­al use, or par­tic­u­lar to a company’s own net­work only, is not yet clear.

In West­ern Europe, the many local author­i­ty by-laws around con­vert­ing build­ing use or devel­op­ing new struc­tures, may make the devel­op­ment of city cen­tre ver­ti­ports high­ly com­plex and cost­ly. At present, Turkey has an ambi­tious, near term ver­ti­port con­struc­tion pro­gram under way.

To learn more about this exten­sive Glob­al Ver­ti­port Report and how to acquire it, please email urbanairmobilitynews.com at:-

Philip@unmannedairspace.info.

For more infor­ma­tion

(Top image: Mod­u­lar Ver­ti­port Solu­tion, cred­it: Sky­portz)

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