New partnership created to launch Ireland’s first operational vertiport for air taxis and BVLOS operations by 2022

Sky­ports will help estab­lish Ireland’s first pas­sen­ger and car­go ver­ti­port, after sign­ing a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with Future Mobil­i­ty Cam­pus Ire­land, Avtrain and Shan­non Group.

The part­ner­ship will help launch an oper­a­tional ver­ti­port at Shannon’s FMCI cam­pus in 2022, with a long-term goal of cre­at­ing the coun­try’s first eVTOL air taxi ser­vice and beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) drone oper­a­tions.

The con­sor­tium has begun work­ing towards launch­ing proof-of-con­cept BVLOS oper­a­tions as ear­ly as Sep­tem­ber. These flights will demon­strate the via­bil­i­ty of unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAV) and high­light the ben­e­fits research and invest­ment in advanced air mobil­i­ty will bring to urban and rur­al areas of Ire­land.

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO at Sky­ports, said: “This part­ner­ship pro­vides a launch pad for Ireland’s advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket. To be con­tribut­ing at this ear­ly stage demon­strates the crit­i­cal­i­ty of ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture to the suc­cess of the indus­try.  Par­tic­i­pat­ing along­side a group of such high cal­i­bre organ­i­sa­tions puts us in a strong posi­tion to kick-start the project, pro­vid­ing the per­fect mix of exper­tise to make our AAM plans a real­i­ty.”

Future Mobil­i­ty Cam­pus Ire­land (FMCI) is the coun­try’s first test­bed for future mobil­i­ty and locat­ed next to Shan­non Air­port. Avtrain is one of Europe’s lead­ing drone train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion body and Shan­non Group’s Inter­na­tion­al Avi­a­tion Ser­vices Cen­tre sup­ports and pro­motes one of Ireland’s largest avi­a­tion clus­ters locat­ed at Shan­non.

Rus­sell Vick­ers, CEO at Future Mobil­i­ty Cam­pus Ire­land, said: “Ire­land and this region in par­tic­u­lar has a huge poten­tial to shape future research and devel­op­ment of Advanced Aer­i­al Mobil­i­ty. This part­ner­ship demon­strates the belief in that poten­tial. Devel­op­ment of a ver­ti­port in con­junc­tion with a UAV test­ing area pro­vides a nat­ur­al exten­sion to the capa­bil­i­ties of the Future Mobil­i­ty Cam­pus. The ecosys­tem con­tin­ues to grow thanks to the vision and belief of our part­ners.”

Julie Gar­land, CEO at Avtrain, added: “The cal­i­bre of the part­ners in this project ensures its suc­cess. The vast expe­ri­ence in train­ing & cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards, ver­ti­port devel­op­ment, BVLOS drone ops, air­port oper­a­tions and autonomous mobil­i­ty are a force to be reck­oned with in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket. The loca­tion next to Shan­non Air­port is the epi­cen­tre of the avi­a­tion indus­try in Ire­land and crit­i­cal to the future inte­gra­tion of manned and unmanned air­craft.”

This lat­est announce­ment from Sky­ports fol­lows on from last week’s piece of news, which said it had been accept­ed to take part in two projects in Japan’s Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture. The com­pa­ny is estab­lish­ing its pres­ence in oth­er coun­tries as well, hav­ing recent­ly appoint­ed Addi­son Fer­rell as its new Head of Amer­i­c­as.

eVTOL Insights also spoke to Yun-yuan Tay, Sky­ports’ Head of Asia Pacif­ic as part of its pod­cast series ear­li­er this year.

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