SkyGate project plans to build Italy’s first vertiport in Turin as part of new advanced air mobility ecosystem

A ground­break­ing project has been launched in Turin, Italy, which aims to offer a com­plete ecosys­tem ded­i­cat­ed to advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) ser­vices. Notable goals include build­ing a net­work of ver­ti­ports for eVTOL air­craft and open­ing an acad­e­my to train new indus­try pilots and tech­ni­cians.

Known as Sky­Gate, it has been found­ed by the hold­ing Always Srl and its sub­sidiary DigiSky. The project is in the process of select­ing star­tups to help accel­er­ate the move­ment and has said the ver­ti­ports would be built by ren­o­vat­ing the cur­rent infra­struc­ture at Tori­no Aer­i­talia Air­port. The acad­e­my is the result of an agree­ment between DigiSky and Aero Club Tori­no.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Sky­Gate also aims to build a lab­o­ra­to­ry for the research and devel­op­ment of new tech­nolo­gies for pas­sen­ger and car­go vehi­cles.

Car­lo Caiaf­fa, Pres­i­dent of Always and who, togeth­er with co-founders Pao­lo Pari and Alessan­dro Rovera, leads the ini­tia­tive, said: “Sky­Gate will offer busi­ness accel­er­a­tion ser­vices for start-ups and scale-ups, cre­at­ing fruit­ful syn­er­gies between enter­pris­es, ser­vices and aca­d­e­mics.

“It is a ver­ti­cal accel­er­a­tor for the urban air mobil­i­ty sec­tor that will gen­er­ate inno­va­tion while attract­ing finan­cial and indus­tri­al invest­ments in the region, with sig­nif­i­cant impacts in terms of job cre­ation.

“Our chal­lenge is to make Sky­Gate one of the first inter­na­tion­al research and devel­op­ment cen­ters for ver­ti­cal mobil­i­ty of the third mil­len­ni­um”

Thanks to the exper­tise of DigiSky founder Mau­r­izio Che­li, a for­mer NASA astro­naut and well renowned test pilot — Sky­Gate will host accel­er­a­tion projects for com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the field of hybrid propul­sion, ener­gy stor­age, ver­ti­cal take-off sys­tems, train­ings, logis­tics and main­te­nance. Com­pa­nies will also be able to find tech­ni­cal and engi­neer­ing sup­port for in-flight val­i­da­tion and test­ing of new tech­nolo­gies and sys­tems.

It also hopes to be the cat­a­lyst for those enter­pris­es which grav­i­tate around the ver­ti­cal air mobil­i­ty sec­tor, and deal with sec­tors such as autonomous dri­ving and trans­port infra­struc­tures: a mar­ket with an enor­mous poten­tial but that is still large­ly unex­pressed.

Sky­Gate has said that unnamed aero­space com­pa­nies have already expressed an inter­est in eval­u­at­ing the tech­nolo­gies devel­oped with­in the research lab.

One of its part­ners is Walle Mobil­i­ty, which is cur­rent­ly work­ing to launch Italy’s first eVTOL air­craft ser­vice by 2026. The start­up is led by CEO Domeni­co Gagliar­di — who has been recog­nised in the first eVTOL Insights Pow­er Book — and it recent­ly announced a joint col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty to devel­op the first urban air mobil­i­ty routes.

Speak­ing to eVTOL Insights about the Sky­Gate ini­tia­tive, Gagliar­di said: “Sky­Gate is an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to show the world that Italy is also present. Walle will par­tic­i­pate in the ini­tia­tive, con­tribut­ing to the con­struc­tion of the first inno­va­tion hub in Italy on the urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket, in addi­tion to the largest objec­tive: the first Ital­ian ver­ti­ports for oper­a­tional tests and more.

“Walle is ready to offi­cial­ly open the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket in Italy. We are about to announce sev­er­al oth­er agree­ments that will bring Walle as a lead­ing play­er in the mar­ket in Italy and South­ern Europe.”

For more infor­ma­tion about the Sky­Gate project, click here.