Air-One, Urban-Air Port’s first UK hub for drones and eVTOL aircraft, opens in Coventry

Urban-Air Port has opened today (Mon­day) what it claims to be the world’s first hub for fly­ing taxis, Air-One, in Coven­try, UK — rep­re­sent­ing a blue­print for more than 200 sites to be built world­wide over the next five years.

The advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) mar­ket is fore­cast to grow by nine per­cent annu­al­ly to reach $1 tril­lion with­in the next two decades, and despite a boom­ing mar­ket and a strong pipeline of eVTOLs enter­ing com­mer­cial oper­a­tions this decade, a lack of ground infra­struc­ture remains one of the sin­gle biggest bar­ri­ers to growth, accord­ing to NASA.

Ricky Sand­hu, Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Urban-Air Port , said: “The open­ing of Air-One is the start­ing gun for an age of zero-emis­sion, con­ges­tion-free trav­el between and with­in cities. 

“From design through to fab­ri­ca­tion, Urban-Air Port has deliv­ered Air-One in just 15 months.”

Air-One will host demon­stra­tor flights of air­craft com­mand and con­trol, eVTOL charg­ing and car­go load­ing for unmanned drones, with West Mid­lands Police and Sky­far­er to be among the first to oper­ate flights from the site. 

Flights of large car­go drones will also be demon­strat­ed by UK-based drone devel­op­er, Mal­loy Aero­nau­tics, said to be the first time a drone of this size has flown in such a dense and built-up urban envi­ron­ment. 

Air-One will also host charg­ing infra­struc­ture for oth­er modes of elec­tric trans­port, includ­ing elec­tric vehi­cles from some of the world’s biggest and most well-known auto­mo­tive brands. 

Min­is­ter for Avi­a­tion Robert Courts said: “The open­ing of Air-One, backed by Gov­ern­ment fund­ing, will put Britain at the van­guard of clean trans­port and bring invest­ment and high-skilled, green job oppor­tu­ni­ties to the nation, while lev­el­ling up oppor­tu­ni­ty in the Mid­lands.”

In Jan­u­ary last year, Air-One was select­ed as a win­ner of the UK Government’s Future Flight Chal­lenge to receive a £1.2 mil­lion grant.

Urban-Air Port’s order book for addi­tion­al sites is planned in the West Mid­lands and Lon­don, and inter­na­tion­al­ly at Los Ange­les in the Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia, South Korea, France, Ger­many, Scan­di­navia and South East Asia.

Mike Whitak­er, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer of Super­nal, said: “Air-One’s Coven­try demon­stra­tion is devel­op­ing a scal­able sys­tem to sup­port advanced air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions that requires col­lab­o­ra­tion from all indus­tries around the world. 

“Supernal’s sup­port of Urban-Air Port rein­forces our belief in fus­ing tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion to enable human­i­ty and soci­ety to reach new lev­els of poten­tial.”

As announced in Octo­ber 2021, Urban-Air Port and the inter­na­tion­al busi­ness divi­sion of Munich Air­port will coop­er­ate on the launch of Air-One. 

Coven­try was cho­sen for the site due to its loca­tion at the heart of the UK and its his­toric lead­er­ship in the auto­mo­bile and aero­space indus­tries, with a series of events to form part of Coventry’s City of Cul­ture cel­e­bra­tions in Sum­mer 2022. 

As part of its mis­sion to deliv­er a ‘world-class’ cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at Air-One® and demon­strate the poten­tial of non-aero­nau­ti­cal rev­enue streams to sup­port a rapid glob­al roll­out, Urban-Air Port® has part­nered with lead­ing brands – Anatomie, Bot­te­ga S.p.A., Eurest (part of Com­pass Group), LG Busi­ness Solu­tions, Moth­er and Paul & Shark – to demon­strate a retail and food & bev­er­age (F&B) expe­ri­ence under the company’s new retail and F&B brand, ‘Urban-Air Choice’.

Air-One®is locat­ed at West­min­ster Car Park, in the cen­tre of Coven­try (CV1 3FZ). Mem­bers of the pub­lic inter­est­ed in attend­ing can sign up for tick­ets at www.urbanairport.com/aironeevent