Sarla Aviation and Urban-Air Port to Build Infrastructure Foundations for Advanced Air Mobility in India

Urban-Air Port (UAP) and Sar­la Avi­a­tion have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing, with both com­pa­nies set to work togeth­er and help build the future of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) in India.

The coun­try is the most pop­u­lous in the world and on the cusp of becom­ing one of the indus­try’s most impor­tant AAM mar­kets. But a thriv­ing ecosys­tem isn’t built on air­craft alone. It requires the infra­struc­ture, oper­a­tions and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works that make safe, scal­able com­mer­cial flight pos­si­ble. Ver­ti­ports. Charg­ing. Pas­sen­ger han­dling. Air­space inte­gra­tion.

As part of this col­lab­o­ra­tion, the com­pa­nies will:

• Inte­grate UAP’s ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture with the Shun­ya air­craft plat­form

• Devel­op a phased roadmap for ver­ti­port deploy­ment across Indi­an cities

• Engage with the DGCA to sup­port future com­mer­cial ver­ti­port oper­a­tions in India

• Assess poten­tial deploy­ment sites across key met­ro­pol­i­tan regions and strate­gic state gov­ern­ment-iden­ti­fied loca­tions

Andrea Wu, CEO of Urban-Air Port, said: “Urban-Air Port has always believed that the real chal­lenge for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty is not a sin­gle demon­stra­tion site, but com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion at net­work scale.

“Four ver­ti­ports do not make a trans­port sys­tem. While much of the indus­try remains focused on air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, we have spent the last sev­en years focused on the infra­struc­ture, oper­a­tions and deploy­ment mod­els required to sup­port AAM at scale.

“To make AAM suc­cess­ful, the indus­try needs repeat­able, rapid­ly deploy­able infra­struc­ture that can be inte­grat­ed into exist­ing cities and expand­ed along­side demand.”

UAP is the team behind Air One, the world’s first ful­ly oper­a­tional Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty hub demon­stra­tor AirOne which was dis­played in Coven­try, UK, back in April 2022.

The launch suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grat­ed air­craft oper­a­tions, charg­ing infra­struc­ture, pas­sen­ger han­dling and reg­u­la­to­ry engage­ment in a live urban envi­ron­ment. UAP also brings expe­ri­ence from projects deliv­ered with lead­ing glob­al aero­space and mobil­i­ty part­ners, includ­ing Hon­da, Super­nal and Air­bus.

By com­bin­ing UAP’s rapid­ly deploy­able ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tional exper­tise with Sarla’s Shun­ya eVTOL plat­form, the two com­pa­nies will work togeth­er to devel­op the infra­struc­ture, oper­a­tional frame­works and deploy­ment strate­gies need­ed to sup­port the com­mer­cial roll­out of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ser­vices across India.

As air­craft pro­grammes progress towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, infra­struc­ture readi­ness becomes increas­ing­ly impor­tant. Our shared focus is ensur­ing that ver­ti­port deploy­ment, oper­a­tional plan­ning and reg­u­la­to­ry engage­ment advance in par­al­lel, so that when Shun­ya enters com­mer­cial ser­vice, the sup­port­ing ecosys­tem is ready to scale with it.

India won’t just adopt Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty. It has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to define how it is deployed at scale.

Wu added: “India has the pop­u­la­tion, ambi­tion and urban growth to become one of the world’s most impor­tant AAM mar­kets and one of the first to demon­strate com­mer­cial deploy­ment at mean­ing­ful scale.

“Sar­la is build­ing an air­craft designed for India and Urban-Air Port has spent years solv­ing the infra­struc­ture chal­lenge. Togeth­er, we can move beyond demon­stra­tions and start build­ing a real net­work.”