PLANA Joins US AAM Research Program in Springfield, Ohio

PLANA is wait­ing for final approval to lease space in the Nation­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Cen­ter of Excel­lence (NAAMCE) in Spring­field, Ohio, as part of its efforts to accel­er­ate its tech­nol­o­gy research and devel­op­ment.

The NAAMCE, adja­cent to the Spring­field-Beck­ley Munic­i­pal Air­port ter­mi­nal, is a 30,000 square foot office build­ing that will house admin­is­tra­tive, lab­o­ra­to­ry, meet­ing, and col­lab­o­ra­tion space, with 25,000 square feet of air­craft hangar space, for the Air Force and pri­vate indus­try.

The US Depart­ment of Defense Office of Local Defense Com­mu­ni­ty Coop­er­a­tion approved a $6 mil­lion Defense Com­mu­ni­ty Infra­struc­ture Pro­gram grant to sup­port the project in 2021. Job­sO­hio sup­port­ed the project through a $2.9 mil­lion Ohio Site Inven­to­ry Pro­gram (OSIP) grant to sup­port site prepa­ra­tion, util­i­ty exten­sions, an access dri­ve, and a park­ing area for the facil­i­ties. The City of Spring­field is fund­ing the bal­ance of the project.

The NAAMCE will pro­vide par­tic­i­pants with a col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment in which com­pa­nies can find sup­port for aero­space research, design, val­i­da­tion, test and flight, train­ing, and busi­ness advice relat­ed to air­craft devel­op­ment. The NAAMCE also sup­ports var­i­ous demon­stra­tion projects show­cas­ing tech­nolo­gies that will advance AAM inte­gra­tion beyond the air­craft itself.

PLANA would join oth­er eVTOL OEMs who have had a pres­ence at the Spring­field-Beck­ley Munic­i­pal Air­port like Joby Avi­a­tion and BETA Tech­nolo­gies, which both have sim­u­la­tors on the air­port grounds.

By join­ing the NAAMCE, PLANA aims to accel­er­ate research on the hybrid-elec­tric AAM air­craft that it is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing, estab­lish new tech­nolo­gies, and col­lab­o­rate with US com­pa­nies and organ­i­sa­tions. The pro­gram also would estab­lish a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the State of Ohio’s capa­bil­i­ties.

Region­al use cas­es are being devel­oped to sup­port logis­tics and emer­gency med­ical ser­vices while the state push­es to estab­lish flight cor­ri­dors con­nect­ing Ohio’s largest cities Cleve­land, Colum­bus, and Cincin­nati. PLANA states that it acknowl­edges strate­gic syn­er­gies as they look to expand upon and utilise these resources to advance their tech­nol­o­gy.

“Par­tic­i­pat­ing in NAAMCE is of great sig­nif­i­cance in build­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive ecosys­tem with var­i­ous AAM projects cur­rent­ly being devel­oped in the US,” said Miny­oung Ahn, co-founder and chief strat­e­gy offi­cer of PLANA. “It is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case South Korea’s AAM tech­nol­o­gy to the world and joint­ly devel­op new tech­nolo­gies for the future.”

Last month, Irvine Vice May­or Tam­my Kim vis­it­ed the PLANA R&D Cen­tre in Incheon, Korea, to explore col­lab­o­ra­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties around eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion.

PLANA part­ners with U.S City of Irvine