FAA releases updated ConOps 2.0 document on blueprint for air taxis

The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) last week released an updat­ed blue­print for air­space and pro­ce­dure changes to accom­mo­date future air taxis and oth­er Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) oper­a­tions.

Under the blue­print, AAM oper­a­tions will begin at a low rate with air taxis fly­ing much as heli­copters do today. They’ll use exist­ing routes and infra­struc­ture such as heli­pads and ear­ly ver­ti­ports. Pilots will com­mu­ni­cate with air traf­fic con­trollers where required.

As the num­ber of oper­a­tions increas­es, air taxis are expect­ed to fly in cor­ri­dors between major air­ports and ver­ti­ports in city cen­ters. The com­plex­i­ty of the cor­ri­dors could increase over time from sin­gle one-way paths to routes serv­ing mul­ti­ple flows of air­craft fly­ing in both direc­tions. Over time, these cor­ri­dors could link an increas­ing num­ber of routes between ver­ti­ports.

The FAA expects air­craft tech­nol­o­gy to evolve as well. Air­craft automa­tion and real-time data shar­ing between air­craft will like­ly play increas­ing roles in these cor­ri­dors.

The oper­a­tional blue­print is a key step, along with cer­ti­fy­ing the air­craft and pilots in the FAA’s effort to safe­ly ush­er in and sup­port this next era of avi­a­tion. It aims to pro­vide a com­mon frame of ref­er­ence to the FAA, NASA and indus­try to help guide their research and deci­sion-mak­ing.

The FAA devel­oped the blue­print with NASA and indus­try stake­hold­ers. The envi­sioned evo­lu­tion for UAM oper­a­tions includes an ini­tial, low-tem­po set of oper­a­tions that lever­age the cur­rent reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and rules like Visu­al Flight Rules and Instru­ment Flight Rules as a plat­form for increas­ing oper­a­tional tem­po, greater air­craft per­for­mance, and high­er auton­o­my.

These are made pos­si­ble by increased infor­ma­tion shar­ing with oper­a­tions across a range of envi­ron­ments, includ­ing major met­ro­pol­i­tan areas and the sur­round­ing sub­urbs.

This updat­ed UAM ConOps v2.0 reflects the con­tin­ued mat­u­ra­tion of UAM and incor­po­rates feed­back received on v1.0, as well as research out­comes and addi­tion­al input from gov­ern­ment and indus­try stake­hold­ers. Its focus is on clar­i­fy­ing ele­ments from the ini­tial ver­sion and pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al detail in response to the feed­back and input.

The FAA blue­print is avail­able by click­ing here.