U.S: FAA Approves New York’s 50-Mile Drone Corridor for UAS Operations After USD113 Million State Investment

This sto­ry broke sev­er­al weeks ago and yet few media out­lets report­ed on this major break­through for the unmanned drone indus­try in Amer­i­ca.

Kathy Hochul, the first female Gov­er­nor of New York State, announced the news on Octo­ber 21st, reports a NUAIR press release. What makes this so impor­tant is that the FAA has not only agreed to Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) tri­als, but across the entire des­ig­nat­ed 50 miles of air­space with­in the New York State Drone Cor­ri­dor.

The flight author­i­ty gives the cor­ri­dor admin­is­tra­tor, NUAIR (North­east UAS Air­space Inte­gra­tion Research), the abil­i­ty to fly car­go and deliv­ery drones from Syra­cuse Inter­na­tion­al Air­port to Griff­iss Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in Rome, locat­ed in the north east area of the State, with­out the need of visu­al observers. The FAA des­ig­na­tion helps to unlock the full poten­tial and eco­nom­ic advan­tage of com­mer­cial drone and advanced air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions includ­ing, at a lat­er stage, eVTOL pas­sen­ger air­craft.

Gov­er­nor Hochul also announced the State will pro­vide NUAIR with an addi­tion­al USD21 mil­lion, on top of the over­all USD113 mil­lion invest­ment.

Gov­er­nor Kathy Hochul

The fund­ing aims to revi­talise com­mu­ni­ties in the region and grow its econ­o­my as part of the ‘New York Cen­tral Ris­ing’ ini­tia­tive plan and cul­ti­vate a world-lead­ing UAS indus­try hub along the cor­ri­dor in Cen­tral New York State and the Mohawk Val­ley. The project will allow for crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture to be test­ed and deployed to enable advanced indus­try appli­ca­tions, state agency adop­tion of UAS and asso­ci­at­ed work­force devel­op­ment.

Gov­er­nor Hochul com­ment­ed, “New York’s state-of-the-art drone cor­ri­dor fur­ther cements the state’s posi­tion as a glob­al leader in this evolv­ing mar­ket for cut­ting-edge drone tech­nol­o­gy.”

She con­tin­ued, “Through our con­tin­ued invest­ment and focus on drone cor­ri­dor oper­a­tions, we are strength­en­ing and grow­ing the region­al economies in Cen­tral New York, the Mohawk Val­ley and statewide for gen­er­a­tions to come.”

The State’s uncrewed air­craft sys­tems Test Site, owned by Onei­da Coun­ty, is one of only sev­en FAA-des­ig­nat­ed sites in the U.S.

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The NUAIR release states, “(We are) already assist­ing a mul­ti­tude of state agen­cies to inte­grate drones into their oper­a­tions includ­ing bridge and infra­struc­ture inspec­tions with the NYS Thruway Author­i­ty, envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion with the NYS DEC and more.”

It goes on, “This extend­ed FAA des­ig­na­tion and addi­tion­al fund­ing will dri­ve UAS indus­try inno­va­tion in New York State, allow­ing for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of cost-effec­tive, and eco­log­i­cal­ly con­scious drone oper­a­tions that will sup­ple­ment vital sup­ply chains through­out New York State.”

NUAIR CEO, Ken Stew­art, remarked, “This 50-mile cor­ri­dor between Rome and Syra­cuse NY unique­ly encom­pass­es all the ele­ments and infra­struc­ture that are key for the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of UAS appli­ca­tions such as inspec­tions of trans­porta­tion and util­i­ty infra­struc­ture, med­ical logis­tics, envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion and pub­lic safe­ty oper­a­tions.”

FAA Region­al Admin­is­tra­tor Marie Ken­ning­ton-Gar­diner added, “What NUAIR learns from its oper­a­tions over Onei­da Lake will help chart a path for rou­tine beyond-line-of-sight drone oper­a­tions across the coun­try.”

NUAIR Drone Oper­a­tions Team pos­es in front of their drone that made the 50-mile BVLOS flight from Syra­cuse Inter­na­tion­al Air­port to Griff­iss Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (image: NUAIR)

Gov­er­nor Hochul also announced that NUAIR has entered into an agree­ment with Que­bec-based VPorts, a glob­al leader in the design, con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture, to devel­op the first-in-the-nation inter­na­tion­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Cor­ri­dor between Syra­cuse Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and Que­bec, Cana­da. The cor­ri­dor aims to build an ecosys­tem that will pro­vide a plat­form for full com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger and car­go trans­port oper­a­tions using eVTOL craft.

Dr Fethi Chebil, VPorts Pres­i­dent and Founder, said, “The in-depth work NUAIR and their part­ners con­duct­ed, as part of a recent NASA AAM task order, led to us select­ing NUAIR to take part in estab­lish­ing the Québec-Syra­cuse inter­na­tion­al cor­ri­dor.” Adding, “This ini­tia­tive will assist in our ambi­tion and vision to build and oper­ate 1,500 ver­ti­ports around the world by 2045.”

Cana­da: VPorts to cre­ate AAM Infra­struc­ture Net­work in Que­bec and flight cor­ri­dors to U.S

Mean­while, New York State con­tin­ues to estab­lish itself as the country’s pre­mier des­ti­na­tion for drones and relat­ed UAS indus­try busi­ness­es. Since 2016, the State has been mak­ing major invest­ments (see exam­ples below).

: An ini­tial invest­ment of USD35 mil­lion to devel­op the 50-mile UAS flight traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem.

: USD9 mil­lion for Sky­dome, Onei­da County’s indoor drone test­ing facil­i­ty.

: More than USD25 mil­lion for five rounds of the GENIUS NY com­pe­ti­tion, a pro­gram admin­is­tered by Cen­ter­State CEO’s Tech Gar­den in Syra­cuse that offers indus­try entre­pre­neurs incu­ba­tor space, com­pa­ny resources, pro­gram­ming and men­tor­ing with the con­di­tion that win­ners estab­lish their oper­a­tions in the region for at least one year.

: USD16.6 mil­lion in ongo­ing invest­ments for the Tech Garden’s expan­sion in down­town Syra­cuse to help grow its UAS indus­try efforts.

Back­ground

These announce­ments com­ple­ment “CNY Ris­ing,” the region’s com­pre­hen­sive blue­print to gen­er­ate major eco­nom­ic growth and com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment. The plan focus­es on cap­i­tal­is­ing glob­al mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties, strength­en­ing entre­pre­neur­ship and cre­at­ing an inclu­sive econ­o­my.

CNY Ris­ing is accel­er­at­ing with a USD500 mil­lion State invest­ment through the ‘Upstate Revi­tal­i­sa­tion Ini­tia­tive’. This fund­ing will incen­tivise pri­vate busi­ness to invest well over USD2.5 bil­lion and aims to cre­ate 5,900 new jobs.

Com­ment

The “rise of the drone cor­ri­dor” is spread­ing aross the world and is an essen­tial part of suc­cess­ful­ly incor­po­rat­ing the green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion in to the already busy glob­al skies. This week news broke from the UK that the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) has approved a 20 mile long “Med­ical Logis­tics Cor­ri­dor” which con­nects the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal Coven­try and War­wick­shire Trust’s hos­pi­tals in Coven­try and Rug­by. This is a small sec­tion of the pro­posed 165 mile “drone super­high­way” across the Mid­lands region that should come into ser­vice in two years time. South Korea is plan­ning a sim­i­lar-sized mod­el.

UK: Sky­far­er, Med­ical Logis­tics Com­mence BVLOS Hos­pi­tal Drone Deliv­er­ies

In France, CEDIF (Cen­tre d’Excellence Drones Île de France) is tri­alling a BVLOS 40 km cor­ri­dor over cities, rail and road infra­struc­ture south of Paris, as part of prepa­ra­tions for the Olympic Games in July 2024.

The Nether­lands is explor­ing a BVLOS cor­ri­dor between the for­mer Valken­burg Naval Air Base in Katwijk to the North Sea, while oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries are fol­low­ing suit. Cre­at­ing var­i­ous drone high­ways across a coun­try is the way for­ward for those who wish to embrace the impend­ing avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion.

(top image: NUAIR)