Ohio DOT unveils three-year Advanced Air Mobility Action Plan to accelerate operations in US state

The Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (ODOT) has released a three-year Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) Action Plan, out­lin­ing how the state intends to turn years of research and test­ing into a scal­able trans­porta­tion and logis­tics ecosys­tem.

Build­ing on Ohio’s 2021 AAM eco­nom­ic impact study and its 2022 statewide frame­work, the strat­e­gy focus­es on six pri­or­i­ties: infra­struc­ture, pol­i­cy, test­ing and inte­grat­ed oper­a­tions, work­force devel­op­ment, fund­ing, and pub­lic engage­ment.

A cen­tral ele­ment is a statewide dig­i­tal net­work enabling air­craft oper­a­tors, ser­vice providers and pub­lic agen­cies to secure­ly exchange infor­ma­tion. Con­nect­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions, track­ing and traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems is intend­ed to sup­port increas­ing­ly com­plex oper­a­tions, includ­ing Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight flights.

The approach recog­nis­es that com­mer­cial deploy­ment requires coor­di­nat­ed invest­ment in phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture, dig­i­tal sys­tems, poli­cies and part­ner­ships. These foun­da­tions will sup­port Ohio’s tran­si­tion from indi­vid­ual demon­stra­tions towards more con­nect­ed avi­a­tion ser­vices.

Phase one: Plan­ning and oper­a­tional prepa­ra­tion — 2026–2027

The open­ing phase estab­lish­es pro­gramme pri­or­i­ties, stake­hold­er respon­si­bil­i­ties and poten­tial pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships. Activ­i­ties include assess­ing air and ground infra­struc­ture, help­ing air­ports plan for readi­ness, and ini­ti­at­ing work­force and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment strate­gies.

Sim­u­lat­ed flight test­ing and a for­mal con­cept of oper­a­tions for extend­ed-range BVLOS mis­sions will help iden­ti­fy dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture require­ments and assess safe­ty per­for­mance before oper­a­tional flight tri­als.

Phase two: Imple­men­ta­tion and demon­stra­tion — 2027–2028

Mar­ket-led pilots will estab­lish ini­tial routes and col­lect evi­dence on safe­ty, infra­struc­ture, data exchange and com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty.

The mis­sion focus includes con­ven­tion­al take­off and land­ing air­craft car­ry­ing pack­ages, med­ical spec­i­mens and spe­cial­ist per­son­nel. This would inform sub­se­quent eval­u­a­tion of ver­ti­cal take­off, short take­off and uncrewed air­craft serv­ing sched­uled routes sup­port­ed by automa­tion.

Field expe­ri­ence will refine work­force require­ments and test whether infor­ma­tion-shar­ing sys­tems can sup­port expan­sion.

Phase three: Prepar­ing to scale — 2028–2029

Lessons from demon­stra­tions will inform poli­cies, infra­struc­ture invest­ment pri­or­i­ties and the respon­si­bil­i­ties of gov­ern­ment, com­mu­ni­ties and indus­try.

Work­force pro­grammes and region­al coor­di­na­tion will expand, along­side prepa­ra­tions for a com­mer­cial dig­i­tal net­work sup­port­ing broad­er oper­a­tions. More com­plex demon­stra­tions would explore urban inte­gra­tion and high­er-den­si­ty air­craft activ­i­ty, sup­port­ed by com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sur­veil­lance, sequenc­ing and weath­er ser­vices.

Progress will depend on safe­ty, tech­nol­o­gy and mar­ket readi­ness, rather than a guar­an­teed com­mer­cial launch timetable.

For more infor­ma­tion and to access the full action plan, vis­it DriveOhio’s web­site.

*Fea­tured image is of Colonel Joseph Zeiss, who gave an open­ing address at eVTOL Insights’ North Amer­i­ca Con­fer­ence & Awards 2026, which took place at the Nation­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Cen­ter of Excel­lence (NAAMCE) near Spring­field, Ohio.