Skyports and Hanwha Systems to establish global advanced air mobility capabilities as part of new partnership

Sky­ports is to work with Han­wha Sys­tems and help fos­ter air mobil­i­ty projects that will include col­lab­o­ra­tion in areas such as infra­struc­ture, flight ser­vices and a mobil­i­ty plat­form.

The part­ner­ship will see Sky­ports and Han­wha Sys­tems devel­op tech­nol­o­gy for advanced air mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture which meets VTOL air­craft oper­a­tor demands and sup­ports envi­ron­men­tal goals. It will also aim to deliv­er tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments which will facil­i­tate a seam­less pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence and a fast and con­ve­nient board­ing process. 

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, said: “Han­wha Sys­tems’ wealth of expe­ri­ence pro­vid­ing smart tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions across the aero­space indus­try make them an impor­tant part­ner for us to advance our ver­ti­port capa­bil­i­ties.

“Their solu­tions-focused, cus­tomer-first approach is high­ly aligned with Sky­ports’ own val­ues. We look for­ward to devel­op­ing this part­ner­ship which will shape our own ver­ti­port offer­ing and enable the wider indus­try.”

Sky­ports has been mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress in recent weeks, with part­ner­ships form­ing across the world with com­pa­nies such as Kane­mat­su in Japan, Kenya Air­ways in Africa and more recent­ly, a con­sor­tium with Future Mobil­i­ty Cam­pus Ire­land, Avtrain and Shan­non Group to launch Ire­land’s first ver­ti­port by 2022.

The com­pa­ny was the first to build a full-scale pas­sen­ger air taxi ver­ti­port, which was launched as part of a tri­al in Sin­ga­pore back in 2019, and cur­rent­ly has infra­struc­ture projects in devel­op­ment else­where in Asia, as well as in Europe and North Amer­i­ca.

In the USA, Addi­son Fer­rell has been appoint­ed Sky­ports’ new Head of Amer­i­c­as and will be respon­si­ble for dri­ving the devel­op­ment of ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture and imple­men­ta­tion of com­mer­cial drone deliv­er­ies. He will also lead the com­pa­ny’s efforts to build pub­lic accep­tance and trust in advanced air mobil­i­ty across the Amer­i­c­as.  

While Han­wha Sys­tems — which owns a 30 per cent stake in eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Overair — has said it is in the final stages of devel­op­ing an elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem, with ini­tial tests to begin lat­er this month. Both com­pa­nies will aim to test an air taxi capa­ble of fly­ing at a max­i­mum speed of 200mph by 2025.