Orlando Airport: “Preparing for The Green Aviation Revolution”

Orlan­do Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (MCO) is plan­ning to con­struct a ver­ti­port for eVTOLs, reports arcamax.com.

The Greater Orlan­do Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (GOAA) has tak­en steps to seek part­ners for devel­op­ing and oper­at­ing such a land­ing base. The invi­ta­tion is to be post­ed next month with a 2028 com­ple­tion tar­get. The ver­ti­port will be built on either land sur­round­ing the East Air­field region on the north­east side or an area to the south side near the train sta­tion.

Angela Bryant Starke, who leads com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions at GOAA, stat­ed via an email that “Invit­ing part­ners will help the air­port cre­ate a fea­si­bil­i­ty study cov­er­ing such things as the poten­tial ver­ti­port cost.”

Angela Starke

Kevin J. Thibault, CEO of GOAA, remarked, “Devel­op­ing a ver­ti­port at Orlan­do Inter­na­tion­al Air­port is a key step in advanc­ing our mis­sion to be the glob­al leader in the evo­lu­tion of mobil­i­ty. This project direct­ly sup­ports our vision to dri­ve inno­va­tion and posi­tion Cen­tral Flori­da and the state at the fore­front of advanced air mobil­i­ty.”

Orlan­do May­or Bud­dy Dyer, and a mem­ber of the avi­a­tion author­i­ty, added, “Build­ing a hub at the air­port makes sense. That means expand­ing the Sun­Rail to the air­port, Bright­line from there to Tam­pa and mak­ing sure we have read­ied the air­port as a ver­ti­hub of the future.” He con­tin­ued, “You can’t just have a ver­ti­port at the air­port; you have to have places for the air­craft to fly to like down­town Orlan­do or Tam­pa.”

After the first ver­ti­port is estab­lished in three years time, the aim is then to con­struct anoth­er in this down­town area. Even­tu­al­ly Dyer hopes to have a man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in the city as well.

But Orlan­do has suf­fered var­i­ous past dis­ap­point­ments.

A con­tract announced in 2020 between Lil­i­um and Lake Nona devel­op­er, Tavi­s­tock, quick­ly end­ed before ful­fill­ing any promise. The fol­low­ing year, Orlan­do part­nered with NASA to estab­lish a plan for how Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) could be inte­grat­ed in to the city, but this nev­er gained trac­tion.

Then in Feb­ru­ary of last year Lil­i­um announced inter­est in estab­lish­ing a ver­ti­port hub, but last week the com­pa­ny went into bank­rupt­cy for the sec­ond time in as many months. 

Starke also stat­ed in her email that the air­port is work­ing close­ly with the FAA. Last Octo­ber, the Agency took an impor­tant step when it issued a final rul­ing for qual­i­fi­ca­tions and train­ing of AAM pilots and instruc­tors. Then in Novem­ber, the air­port host­ed a two-day table­top exer­cise spon­sored by the FAA focused on oper­at­ing rules, air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and more.

Dreams that were “nev­er to be”

There are a num­ber of elec­tric air­craft com­pa­nies in Flori­da includ­ing Doroni Aero­space, which is devel­op­ing a two-pas­sen­ger per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cle and Luft­Car, who is con­struct­ing a hydro­gen-pow­ered VTOL vehi­cle. Essen­tial­ly, the fly­ing com­po­nent, called “a Fly­ing Fork­lift” by the com­pa­ny, attach­es to the car that then enables it to fly.

Mean­while, Dyer remains cau­tious. “A lot of the tim­ing hinges around the FAA. They’re respon­si­ble for things like devel­op­ing routes or how they inte­grate with traf­fic con­trol sys­tems that we already have at air­ports. So, there’s still a lot to do before we have ‘The Jet­sons’ fly­ing around.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://flymco.com

News Source: www.arcamax.com

(Top image: Orlan­do Air­port)

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