PODCAST: Inside California’s First FAA-Compliant AAM Network with Lavera Alexander of Monterey Bay Economic Partnership

Our next pod­cast episode is live! This week, we were delight­ed to be joined by Lav­era Alexan­der, who is Chief Growth Offi­cer and CAMC Direc­tor at the Mon­terey Bay Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship (MBEP) and talked about Cal­i­for­ni­a’s pio­neer­ing approach to Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty.

Lav­era explains how the Cal­i­for­nia Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Cor­ri­dors Ini­tia­tive (CAMC) is con­nect­ing four pub­lic-use air­ports into the state’s first FAA-com­pli­ant mul­ti-air­port flight net­work, shift­ing the indus­try’s focus from prov­ing air­craft per­for­mance to val­i­dat­ing inte­grat­ed trans­porta­tion sys­tems.

She dis­cuss­es why coor­di­na­tion between air­ports, util­i­ties, reg­u­la­tors, com­mu­ni­ties and indus­try part­ners is just as impor­tant as tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, and why pub­lic trust must be treat­ed as crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture. The con­ver­sa­tion also explores work­force devel­op­ment, com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment, eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and the impor­tance of demon­strat­ing tan­gi­ble pub­lic ben­e­fits, from emer­gency response and health­care access to car­go oper­a­tions.

Lav­era shares her vision of suc­cess for AAM, where elec­tric air­craft become an accept­ed, every­day part of trans­porta­tion net­works that gen­uine­ly improve peo­ple’s lives.

Click on the Play but­ton below to lis­ten to the episode, which is also avail­able on whichev­er pod­cast plat­form you use.