UK: “Skyports Hosts Preview of Operationally Complete Vertiport at Bicester Motion”

Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture, a leader in ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture for the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) indus­try, announced it has reached oper­a­tional com­ple­tion of its ver­ti­port at Bices­ter Motion, Oxford­shire, one of the UK’s first test­ing grounds and hubs for eVTOL flights, reports a press release. Sky­ports host­ed part­ners of the Advanced Mobil­i­ty Ecosys­tem Con­sor­tium (AMEC) at a recent inau­gur­al pre­view of the com­plet­ed facil­i­ty. 

The release explains, “Dur­ing the event, atten­dees were giv­en demon­stra­tions of ver­ti­port oper­a­tions includ­ing pas­sen­ger pro­cess­ing, ver­ti­port automa­tion sys­tems for air­craft and pas­sen­gers, Sky­ports’ pro­pri­etary Remote Man­age­ment & Sched­ul­ing Sys­tem (RMSS) and sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness tools (such as weath­er sen­sors and real-time air­craft track­ing), ensur­ing oper­a­tional safe­ty and pro­vid­ing a rad­i­cal rethink­ing of the pas­sen­ger jour­ney at ver­ti­ports.”

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, remarked, “Com­plet­ing Bices­ter adds anoth­er ver­ti­port to our rapid­ly expand­ing port­fo­lio.  We are excit­ed to see com­mer­cial AAM oper­a­tions go live in the near future in the UK.”

The ver­ti­port is an impor­tant ele­ment of AMEC, a UKRI Future Flight Chal­lenge project that demon­strates fea­si­bil­i­ty of an AAM ecosys­tem in the UK.

It is a crit­i­cal facil­i­ty for tri­alling eVTOLs, ground infra­struc­ture and flight oper­a­tions, enabling the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric, low noise avi­a­tion in the UK. The ver­ti­port is designed to devel­op along­side evolv­ing eVTOL tech­nolo­gies, pro­vid­ing the UK with a cen­tral hub for part­ners to col­lab­o­rate on future advanced air mobil­i­ty projects.

Michael Cer­ven­ka, Chief Com­mer­cial and Strat­e­gy Offi­cer at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, com­ment­ed, “Hav­ing access to an oper­a­tional­ly ready ver­ti­port enables us to val­i­date not just the per­for­mance of eVTOL air­craft, but the real-world infra­struc­ture and process­es that will sup­port future elec­tric air trav­el. Col­lab­o­ra­tion through the Advanced Mobil­i­ty Ecosys­tem is turn­ing ambi­tion into action, and we’re proud to be at the fore­front of this jour­ney.”

The release con­tin­ues, “The ver­ti­port will serve as a key net­work node and liv­ing lab for the Consortium’s wider test­ing pro­gramme and pub­lic and stake­hold­er engage­ment, includ­ing demon­stra­tion flights of Ver­ti­cal Aerospace’s VX4 pro­to­type.”

Sky­ports’ new ver­ti­port at Bices­ter Motion includes:-

: A com­pact ter­mi­nal, con­struct­ed on a plot of 0.42 acres, to show­case the infrastructure’s effi­cient nature and high­light the capac­i­ty for easy inte­gra­tion into urban land­scapes, where space is at a pre­mi­um, while facil­i­tat­ing fast pas­sen­ger through­put.

: Pas­sen­ger pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties to include pas­sen­ger weight data col­lec­tion and bal­ance opti­mi­sa­tion; pas­sen­ger iden­ti­ty val­i­da­tion; ver­i­fi­ca­tion and screen­ing. The addi­tion of a pas­sen­ger lounge will offer a com­pre­hen­sive cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

: An oper­a­tions room equipped with Sky­ports’ suite of Ver­ti­port Automa­tion Sys­tem (VAS) tech­nol­o­gy, fea­tur­ing a bespoke resource man­age­ment and sched­ul­ing oper­a­tions dash­board, enabling high air­craft through­put com­pat­i­ble with all oper­a­tors.

: A sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness mod­ule to pro­vide visu­al­i­sa­tion tools for com­pre­hen­sive air­space, weath­er and ver­ti­port perime­ter mon­i­tor­ing.

James Rich­mond, Head of AAM at con­sor­tium leader, Atkin­sRéalis, said,  “The infra­struc­ture is already prov­ing its val­ue as a pathfind­er project for the UK, set­ting new prece­dents and pro­vid­ing insights for the indus­try.”

He con­tin­ued, “As a liv­ing lab and cen­tre of inno­va­tion for the Advanced Mobil­i­ty Ecosys­tem Con­sor­tium, we expect it to con­tin­ue to play a long-term role in val­i­dat­ing end-to-end oper­a­tional con­cepts and tech­nolo­gies. The lessons learned here will be crit­i­cal for stream­lin­ing the devel­op­ment of oth­er ver­ti­ports in the UK, ulti­mate­ly scal­ing Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty.”

Back­ground

AMEC is a group of lead­ing British avi­a­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and trans­port com­pa­nies demon­strat­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a UK AAM ecosys­tem employ­ing eVTOL air­craft. 

Fund­ed by the UK Government’s Future Flight Chal­lenge, the con­sor­tium is devel­op­ing the nec­es­sary tech­nol­o­gy and infra­struc­ture to sig­nif­i­cant­ly accel­er­ate the intro­duc­tion of AAM in the UK. 

Mem­bers include Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Atkin­sRéalis, Sky­ports and NATS, along with Con­nect­ed Places Cat­a­pult and lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty and WMG: Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://skyports.net/

https://www.futureairmobility.com

(Images: Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture)

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