Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority today released Guidelines for Vertiport Design

Australia’s avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tor, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Author­i­ty (CASA) today released Guide­lines for Ver­ti­port Design fol­low­ing exten­sive com­mu­ni­ty and indus­try con­sul­ta­tion.

“This is a great step for­ward for Aus­tralia and shows our pre­pared­ness to wel­come this new indus­try into Aus­tralian skies,” said ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture devel­op­er, Clem New­ton-Brown from Sky­portz.

“There is no doubt the air­craft are com­ing. How­ev­er, the poten­tial for this indus­try will only be achieved if we break the nexus between avi­a­tion and air­ports and enable a new class of land use to emerge, giv­ing prop­er­ty own­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to host elec­tric air taxi ver­ti­ports”.

Sky­portz has been col­lect­ing togeth­er options on a sta­ble of poten­tial ver­ti­port sites pri­mar­i­ly in Aus­tralia and has many hun­dreds of enthu­si­as­tic prop­er­ty part­ners. This new doc­u­ment will pro­vide more clar­i­ty on the devel­op­ment of sites for ver­ti­port uses. The Aus­tralian reg­u­la­tions will allow cor­po­rate brand­ed ver­ti­ports, enabling com­pa­nies such as Sky­portz to devel­op oper­a­tional net­works.

“We look for­ward to wel­com­ing air taxi devel­op­ers to Aus­tralia to oper­ate from our net­work of Sky­portz ver­ti­ports in the future,” added New­ton-Brown.

The advi­so­ry cir­cu­lar (AC) pro­vides ini­tial guid­ance in the plan­ning and phys­i­cal design of ver­ti­ports to sup­port the safe and effi­cient oper­a­tion of eVTOL capa­ble air­craft oper­at­ing with a pilot on board in visu­al con­di­tions only.

It is not intend­ed to restrict or lim­it a pilot from deter­min­ing the most suit­able area for land­ing or take-off. Where pos­si­ble, out­come-based guid­ance is pro­vid­ed. While reg­u­la­tions were pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten in a pre­scrip­tive man­ner, organ­i­sa­tions are now also required to devel­op process­es that will deliv­er an effec­tive out­come.

The doc­u­ment is avail­able from the fol­low­ing link:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dfzklxrzysn239dn0faes/CASA-vertiport-design-final‑7–2023.pdf?rlkey=b7h4cet0yklr7g1g38gb11jmt&dl=0

In Decem­ber 2022, CASA released draft guide­lines for ver­ti­port con­struc­tion to ser­vice eVTOL infra­struc­ture.

Aus­tralia: Sky­portz Wel­comes CASA Ver­ti­port Draft Guide­lines for eVTOLs