Blade Air Mobility Collaborates with Skyports Infrastructure “to Offer Flights Between Downtown Manhattan and JFK Airport”

Blade Air Mobil­i­ty and Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture, announced this week a col­lab­o­ra­tion to launch a pilot pro­gram that will expand Blade’s exist­ing “by-the-seat” heli­copter trans­fer ser­vice, con­nect­ing the Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port and John F. Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, reports a press release.

This new ser­vice will fly pas­sen­gers trans­fer­ring to and from flights at JFK, in addi­tion to Long Island and Queens res­i­dents com­mut­ing to or from Man­hat­tan for busi­ness or leisure on week­days. The facil­i­ty, locat­ed at the south­ern tip of Man­hat­tan, close to Wall Street, is an impor­tant New York City hub for short dis­tance avi­a­tion.

The release explains, “The pilot pro­gram aims to gath­er data on con­sumer demand, fli­er expe­ri­ence, and logis­tics spe­cif­ic to the Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port. These insights will help accel­er­ate and de-risk the launch of eVTOL oper­a­tions at the facil­i­ty which are expect­ed to replace heli­copters.”

Nathan Alexan­der, VP of Rotor­craft for Blade, com­ment­ed, “The eVTOL qui­et and emis­sion-free design will sup­port the expan­sion of con­ve­nient land­ing zones while reduc­ing com­muter costs. From logis­tics, pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence, book­ing, ground crew and even flight time, these ser­vices will be near­ly iden­ti­cal to Blade’s cur­rent heli­copter offer­ings, but using next-gen­er­a­tion air­craft.”

This part­ner­ship fol­lows Sky­ports’ recent appoint­ment by the New York City Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NYCEDC) as the oper­a­tor of the Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port via their Down­town Sky­port JV with Groupe ADP, under­scor­ing the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to advanc­ing urban air mobil­i­ty in New York City.

Addi­son Fer­rell, Direc­tor of Infra­struc­ture for Sky­ports, remarked, “The two par­ties are com­mit­ted to trans­form­ing the Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port into one of the lead­ing Elec­tric Air­craft ver­ti­ports in the world. Our alliance with Blade will serve to accel­er­ate a com­mon mis­sion to unlock the skies for eVTOL flights.”

(Visu­al­i­sa­tion of the Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port as a sus­tain­able, mul­ti-modal trans­porta­tion and logis­tics hub — Cred­it: Down­town Sky­port)

This ser­vice is sched­uled to com­mence next month. Flights will be offered on week­days from 3 pm to 7 pm. Cus­tomers can pur­chase by-the-seat flights start­ing at USD195, or from USD95 with a Blade Air­port Pass or Com­muter Pass for those fly­ing between home and work.

Back­ground

Blade is a lead­ing heli­copter pas­sen­ger ser­vice with oper­a­tions in the U.S and Europe. The company’s asset-light busi­ness mod­el, cou­pled with its exclu­sive pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal infra­struc­ture and pro­pri­etary tech­nolo­gies, is designed to facil­i­tate an easy tran­si­tion from heli­copters and fixed-wing air­craft to eVTOLs, enabling low­er cost air mobil­i­ty that is both qui­et and emis­sion-free.

Blade’s Med­i­Mo­bil­i­ty divi­sion pro­vides air trans­porta­tion and logis­tics for hos­pi­tals across the Amer­i­ca, where it is one of the largest trans­porters of human organs for trans­plant.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.blade.com

www.skyports.net

(Top graph­ic image: Blade Air Mobil­i­ty)

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