Skyportz CEO says India will be Key Region for Electric Air Taxis, Ahead of Attending Wings Airshow in Hyderabad

Sky­portz has released new analy­sis where it iden­ti­fies Del­hi, India as a crit­i­cal glob­al mar­ket for elec­tric air taxi deploy­ment.

The com­pa­ny has pro­duced a doc­u­ment, called The Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) Ver­ti­port Mar­ket Study, which sug­gests India can devel­op into one of the world’s largest pas­sen­ger air taxi mar­kets over the next two decades. Its cap­i­tal city Del­hi stands out as a high-poten­tial launch region, with strong demand fun­da­men­tals and clear infra­struc­ture needs as net­works scale.

Skyportz’s mod­el­ling indi­cates the enor­mous pos­si­bil­i­ties of AAM in Del­hi and India more broad­ly, and fore­casts the poten­tial for:

• Around 40 mil­lion pas­sen­ger trips per year in Del­hi by 2045, and 200–250 mil­lion across India
  
• Approx­i­mate­ly US$400 mil­lion in annu­al pas­sen­ger rev­enues in Del­hi by 2045, with an indica­tive extrap­o­la­tion to about US$2.0–2.5 bil­lion in annu­al pas­sen­ger rev­enues across India by 2045
  
• About 10,000 to 15,000 ver­ti­pads across India by 2045 (indica­tive), anchored on a Del­hi require­ment of around 2,200 ver­ti­pads

The report con­tends that Delhi’s posi­tion as a major AAM mar­ket in 2045 is dri­ven by a num­ber of fac­tors, includ­ing:

The long aver­age com­mute dis­tances and low peak-hour trav­el speeds, which make the time sav­ings of air taxi trav­el sig­nif­i­cant.

• The high reliance on road-based trans­port, which means alter­na­tives are less read­i­ly avail­able and air taxi ser­vices can dis­place high­er com­muter vol­umes.

• The grow­ing wealth of Del­hi (and Indi­an) res­i­dents and high­er pro­por­tion of res­i­dents who could afford air taxi ser­vices over time

• The rel­a­tive­ly low costs oper­at­ing costs of air taxi ser­vices, with both low­er cap­i­tal require­ments to estab­lish net­works and low­er ongo­ing costs com­pared to oth­er major cities

Skyportz’s mod­el­ling shows that as air taxi costs fall, urban com­muter ser­vices and inter­ci­ty routes become increas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive, accel­er­at­ing demand for infra­struc­ture dis­trib­uted through­out the met­ro­pol­i­tan area rather than con­cen­trat­ed at a small num­ber of hubs

Aer­oberm: Infra­struc­ture Designed for Del­hi-Scale Roll­out

Skyportz’s Aer­oberm™ mod­u­lar ver­ti­pad sys­tem is designed to sup­port net­work-scale deploy­ment in high-den­si­ty cities such as Del­hi. The sys­tem is intend­ed to enable:

• Rapid instal­la­tion of ground-lev­el and rooftop ver­ti­pads

• Man­age­ment of down­wash safe­ty, noise and oper­a­tional per­for­mance

• Incre­men­tal expan­sion from dozens to hun­dreds, and ulti­mate­ly thou­sands, of pads as air­craft fleets grow

Sky­portz CEO, Clem New­ton-Brown is in India for the Wings Air­show in Hyder­abad and is meet­ing with air safe­ty reg­u­la­tor, Direc­torate Gen­er­al of Civ­il Avi­a­tion and local air taxi devel­op­ers such as The ePlane Com­pa­ny, Sar­la Avi­a­tion, Nal­wa and BluJ Aero.

He said: “Delhi’s num­bers make one thing clear: this is not a small bou­tique mar­ket. Our mod­el­ling points to thou­sands of ver­ti­pads, tens of mil­lions of pas­sen­gers and sus­tained long-term infra­struc­ture demand. That scale requires mod­u­lar, afford­able sys­tems designed for net­works such as the Aer­oberm™”

“With Del­hi as a lead mar­ket, India has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to help shape how city-scale AAM infra­struc­ture is deployed. We look for­ward to work­ing with the DCGA and local air taxi devel­op­ers.”

Robert Bassey, for­mer FAA nation­al lead for ver­ti­port design in the USA and now a strate­gic advis­er to Sky­portz, said the Aer­oberm sys­tem is being devel­oped with glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry accep­tance in mind.

He added: “Hav­ing worked inside the FAA, I under­stand what reg­u­la­tors need to see before new infra­struc­ture can scale — clear per­for­mance evi­dence, defined oper­at­ing assump­tions and a cred­i­ble inspec­tion and life­cy­cle frame­work.

“Our focus at Sky­portz is on build­ing a mod­u­lar ver­ti­pad prod­uct that can be eval­u­at­ed con­sis­tent­ly across mar­kets and accept­ed by reg­u­la­tors world­wide. India is a crit­i­cal advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket, and I look for­ward to con­struc­tive engage­ment with DGCA and indus­try as safe, scal­able frame­works con­tin­ue to take shape.”