Skyports opens Tokyo branch office to develop AAM services

Sky­ports has today announced the open­ing of its branch office in Tokyo, Japan, the for­ma­tion of which reflects Sky­ports’ con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to devel­op­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with local part­ners, busi­ness­es, reg­u­la­tors, and end-users.

Sky­ports’ Japan office is the first in the region out­side its Asia-Pacif­ic head­quar­ters in Sin­ga­pore, and fol­lows a year of sig­nif­i­cant activ­i­ty in the coun­try, with Japan­ese trad­ing con­glom­er­ate Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion join­ing Sky­ports’ list of investors in the company’s Series B fund­ing round and tak­ing a seat on its board in March. This fol­lows a grow­ing port­fo­lio of projects in Osa­ka and Tokyo, and in Sep­tem­ber, Atsushi Oka­da was appoint­ed as Sky­ports’ Japan Coun­try Man­ag­er.

Sky­ports head of Asia-Pacif­ic Yun-Yuan TAY said: “The Asia-Pacif­ic region is an impor­tant hub for AAM, and Japan a lead­ing mar­ket with­in it. With sup­port from our investor Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion, we have sig­nif­i­cant­ly matured our net­works and port­fo­lio in the coun­try in the last year with mul­ti­ple projects in progress.

“The incor­po­ra­tion of our Japan­ese office was the next log­i­cal step in strength­en­ing our oper­a­tions in the coun­try, enabling us to work close­ly with the grow­ing ecosys­tem of AAM play­ers as we approach new mile­stones in the coun­try.”

Coun­try man­ag­er for Japan Atsushi Oka­da said: “As a glob­al inno­va­tion pow­er­house Japan will play an impor­tant role in the future of AAM, and for Sky­ports, the focus for the next year is to progress our ongo­ing projects in Osa­ka and Tokyo through site assess­ments and reg­u­lar engage­ments with the reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties as we look towards 2025 for ini­tial deploy­ment.”

Atsushi will over­see Sky­ports’ infra­struc­ture and drone ser­vices oper­a­tions in the coun­try, and lead an exten­sive list of pri­or­i­ties includ­ing real estate agree­ments, local stake­hold­er engage­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry approvals, air­port and air­space plan­ning, oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures, and enabling tech­nol­o­gy.

Ear­li­er this month, Joby Avi­a­tion and Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture announced that they were devel­op­ing a ‘Liv­ing Lab’ pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal that will enable the two com­pa­nies to test a vari­ety of tech­nolo­gies and pro­ce­dures that will help define how pas­sen­gers expe­ri­ence ver­ti­cal flight in the future.

Joby Avi­a­tion and Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture to devel­op ‘Liv­ing Lab’ pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal

In August, Sky­ports secured a $3.13 mil­lion invest­ment from ST Engi­neer­ing to joint­ly oper­ate reser­voir mon­i­tor­ing and inspec­tion drone ser­vices for Singapore’s Pub­lic Util­i­ties Board.

Sky­ports secures $3.13 mil­lion invest­ment from ST Engi­neer­ing in Sin­ga­pore