Jeju Island: “Skyports Infrastructure Appointed Lead Vertiport Developer & Operator For South Korea’s First Commercial Vertiport Network”

Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture, the UK-based glob­al leader in ver­ti­port devel­op­ment for the advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) indus­try, has been appoint­ed as the lead devel­op­er and oper­a­tor for South Korea’s first com­mer­cial ver­ti­port net­work on Jeju Island, reports a press release.

The agree­ment as part of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) between Sky­ports and Jeju Provin­cial Gov­ern­ment, was signed in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 2025 Jeju Glob­al Future Aero­space Con­fes­ta, held at Jeju Shin­hwa World. 

The MOU aims to pave the way for AAM oper­a­tions in Jeju, ahead of planned eVTOL oper­a­tions to be launched by 2028. This includes a ver­ti­port net­work on the island after secur­ing sites and agree­ment with rel­e­vant landown­ers.

Sky­ports is to take the lead in plan­ning and build­ing these ver­ti­ports; secur­ing invest­ment; man­ag­ing busi­ness oper­a­tions and con­sult­ing; along­side find­ing a suit­able OEM air­craft part­ner. 

The ini­tial pro­posed ver­ti­port sites are Jeju Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, Jung­mun and Seongsan with fur­ther loca­tions mapped out for poten­tial future expan­sion. 

The ini­tial routes will look to reduce exist­ing trans­port times by approx­i­mate­ly 85 per­cent, with all routes reduc­ing approx­i­mate­ly 60 minute dri­ve times to 9–10 minute flights.

As South Korea’s top tourist des­ti­na­tion, Jeju Island (dubbed ‘Hawaii of the East’) sees an aver­age of 13 mil­lion vis­i­tors per year, with 230 domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al flights arriv­ing dai­ly.

Addi­son Fer­rell, Direc­tor of Infra­struc­ture, Sky­ports, com­ment­ed, “This MOU reflects our shared vision to cre­ate the infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tions need­ed to bring AAM to life. Jeju’s unique envi­ron­ment makes it the ide­al launch­pad, and we are com­mit­ted to ensur­ing this project becomes a mod­el for Asia and beyond.”

The release explains, “The Island’s AAM ambi­tions have also seen sup­port from the Jeju Provin­cial Gov­ern­ment, hav­ing been des­ig­nat­ed by the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, and Trans­porta­tion (MOLIT) as a tourism & region­al Korea UAM (K‑UAM) test zone, hav­ing also com­plet­ed the most AAM readi­ness exer­cis­es com­pared to oth­er provinces, mak­ing it the lead­ing loca­tion for AAM deploy­ment in Korea.”

Oh Young-hoon, Gov­er­nor of Jeju Provin­cial Gov­ern­ment, remarked, “This agree­ment marks a turn­ing point in real­is­ing the new trans­porta­tion sys­tem Jeju has envi­sioned. By com­bin­ing our unique geo­graph­ic advan­tages with world-class tech­nol­o­gy, we will write a new chap­ter in the his­to­ry of future mobil­i­ty.”

The sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny was attend­ed by Jeju Gov­er­nor, Oh Young-hoon, and Addi­son Fer­rell, Direc­tor of Infra­struc­ture at Sky­ports.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyports.net

(Top image: Oh Young-hoon, Addi­son Fer­rell at the sign­ing)

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