Italy’s first vertiport deployed today at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport

This morn­ing, Aero­por­ti di Roma (ADR), Atlantia, UrbanV, and Volo­copter suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the first crewed eVTOL test flights in Ital­ian air­space, part of a mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem set­up at Fiumicino’s Leonar­do da Vin­ci Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The part­ners con­duct­ed the first crewed eVTOL pub­lic test flight in Italy, while pre­sent­ing the country’s first advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) test­ing ver­ti­port and host­ing an inter­ac­tive book­ing process on Volocopter’s VoloIQ dig­i­tal plat­form.

The test comes one year after the first eVTOL pro­to­type was show­cased in Italy, since which time sig­nif­i­cant progress has been made on flight tech­nol­o­gy, ver­ti­port design, and the reg­u­la­tions nec­es­sary to enable the first AAM ser­vices between Fiu­mi­ci­no Air­port and the city of Rome planned to take to the skies by 2024.

Volocopter’s test pilot aboard the elec­tric Volo­copter 2X flew 40 km/h for five min­utes at 40 meters height along a ‘fig­ure 8’ flight path in front of onlook­ers after attain­ing all the nec­es­sary clear­ances from the Ital­ian author­i­ties, the civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty (Ente Nazionale per l’Avi­azione Civile — ENAC), and the provider of air traf­fic con­trol ser­vices (Ente Nazionale Assis­ten­za al Volo — ENAV).

The ver­ti­port is devel­oped in com­pli­ance with the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency’s (EASA) ‘Pro­to­type Tech­ni­cal Spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the Design of VFR Ver­ti­ports for Oper­a­tion with Manned VTOL-Capa­ble Air­craft Cer­ti­fied in the Enhanced Cat­e­go­ry’ and is locat­ed with­in the reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box approved by ENAC.

It is designed to host var­i­ous types of tests for both flight and ground oper­a­tions for turn­around and bat­tery charg­ing, with an elec­tric sys­tem devised to allow test­ing of var­i­ous eVTOL charg­ing tech­nolo­gies like bat­tery swaps and fast charg­ing.

Occu­py­ing an area of about 5,500 square meters, the infra­struc­ture has been sized to ensure com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with the main eVTOLs that will be cer­ti­fied in the com­ing years and con­sists of a final approach and take­off area (FATO) for land­ing and take­off oper­a­tions, a park­ing area, a cov­ered hangar mea­sur­ing 20 x 20 x 6 meters, and var­i­ous rooms, includ­ing an office, a ware­house, and an area for bat­tery charg­ing.

This morning’s flight was fol­lowed by a ver­ti­port demon­stra­tion host­ed by UrbanV, a com­pa­ny estab­lished by ADR, togeth­er with Aéro­ports de la Côte d’Azur, Aero­por­to di Venezia, and Aero­por­to Gugliel­mo Mar­coni di Bologna.

The VoloIQ dig­i­tal plat­form is the back­bone of the urban air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem sup­port­ing dig­i­tal access to all work­ing process­es from flight oper­a­tions to book­ing and beyond.

Atlantia chair­man Giampiero Mas­so­lo said: “We aim to open up the ser­vice to the pub­lic at Fiu­mi­ci­no by col­lab­o­rat­ing with the relat­ed insti­tu­tions, before extend­ing it to the oth­er air­ports in which we have invest­ed by 2024.”

Aero­por­ti di Roma CEO Mar­co Tron­cone com­ment­ed: “The open­ing of the first ver­ti­port in Italy and the first crewed eVTOL flight rep­re­sent a remark­able step towards the acti­va­tion of the first AAM routes between Fiu­mi­ci­no air­port and Rome city cen­tre by the end of 2024.”

Volo­copter chief com­mer­cial offi­cer Chris­t­ian Bauer added: “We have come from a signed part­ner­ship agree­ment to a flight test at an oper­a­tional air­port in a lit­tle less than a year, bring­ing togeth­er all the key stake­hold­ers and reg­u­la­tors to wit­ness this with their own eyes.”

UrbanV CEO Car­lo Tur­si con­tin­ued: “We are mak­ing progress towards posi­tion­ing Rome as one of the first Euro­pean cities to offer seam­less con­nec­tions with elec­tric air­craft, lever­ag­ing the exper­tise we have devel­oped in design­ing and build­ing ground infra­struc­ture for advanced air mobil­i­ty.”

Recent stud­ies con­duct­ed by EASA and the McK­in­sey Cen­tre for Future Mobil­i­ty have con­clud­ed that the esti­mat­ed mar­ket size of urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) in Europe will be approx­i­mate­ly €4.2 bil­lion by 2030, with the capac­i­ty to cre­ate or sus­tain approx­i­mate­ly 90,000 jobs. The study also ranks Rome as one of the most suit­able cities in Italy for the imple­men­ta­tion of UAM/AAM ser­vices.