Vertiports 2022: The Story So Far

You know when a new indus­try is mak­ing head­way and advanc­ing towards a respect­ed place with­in the bas­tion of estab­lish­ment con­trol… the lawyers appear. The dol­lar signs begin ring­ing; phras­es like “asset class” and “invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties”, get bandied around; along­side the clar­i­on call of “don’t get left behind!”

One major glob­al law firm, Reed Smith, has grabbed at the chance, and is surf­ing the eVTOL wave before it’s been bare­ly formed. With 1,500 lawyers in 30 dif­fer­ent offices from the U.S to the Mid­dle East, the com­pa­ny made a mouth-water­ing turnover of USD1.17 bil­lion in 2018/19, rep­re­sent­ing USD1.26 mil­lion per equi­ty part­ner.

https://www.reedsmith.com/en

Agreed, lawyers get a bad press, where a major­i­ty of the pub­lic dis­like and dis­trust them, yet want their chil­dren to become one at the same time. Occa­sion­al­ly and grub­bi­ly referred to as ‘ambu­lance chasers’, Amer­i­can poet, Robert Frost, sums up this dichoto­my when he wrote, “A jury con­sists of twelve per­sons cho­sen to decide who has the bet­ter lawyer.”

For lawyers or attor­neys are usu­al­ly intel­li­gent peo­ple who hold an innate abil­i­ty to beat the best through rea­son, ratio­nale, psy­cho­log­i­cal per­sua­sion and the clever use of words. A “grudg­ing respect” is a phrase, per­haps, to use?

Reed Smith has become so bewitched by the nascent eVTOL indus­try that it has devot­ed a sec­tion on its esteemed lexology.com web­site under the head­ing: Legal Flight Deck.

https://www.legalflightdeck.com/

Anoth­er Per­spec­tive (pic: UAP)

The most recent piece from a grow­ing list of arti­cles is enti­tled, “Ver­ti­ports 2022: The Sto­ry So Far.” It begins, “We wrote ear­li­er this year about ver­ti­ports as an asset class, and a per­ceived poten­tial lag in the devel­op­ment of these assets com­pared to that of the eVTOL air­craft that ver­ti­ports are designed to sup­port.”

The arti­cle or blog con­tin­ues, “This now seems to be chang­ing, and there has been a real sense of momen­tum build­ing in this space over the last few months – so much so that it can be dif­fi­cult to keep up, which is why we set out here a few of the key devel­op­ments shap­ing ver­ti­ports and eVTOL sup­port infra­struc­ture to be aware of.” Cred­it to the blog­ger, Luke Drake, who has done the required research and com­piled four sep­a­rate sec­tions to express his views.

Ver­ti­port Design

EASA is referred to and its Pro­to­type Tech­ni­cal Design Spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Drake writes, “One of the most strik­ing inno­va­tions is the idea of the ‘obsta­cle free vol­ume’ which pro­pos­es a fun­nel-shaped des­ig­nat­ed land­ing space that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly makes use of the ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing capa­bil­i­ties of these air­craft and recog­nis­es the real­i­ty of jug­gling both pas­sen­ger safe­ty and the flight paths pos­si­ble in the high-den­si­ty, built-up urban areas in which these air­craft will oper­ate.”

Drake then points out the need for EASA to devel­op “ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments for ver­ti­port oper­a­tions”, and says this will be ben­e­fi­cial for the UK after the CAA announced ear­li­er this week “it will use the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards inform­ing the ‘Spe­cial Con­di­tion for small-cat­e­go­ry VTOL air­craft’, devel­oped by EASA, as the basis for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of new mod­els of such eVTOL air­craft in the UK.”

Ver­ti­port Pro­to­types

Like many oth­ers, he is excit­ed about the suc­cess of the ‘Pop-up’ Air One ver­ti­port event in Coven­try a few months back, but points out, “While Air-One might have made the biggest recent head­lines, oth­er com­pa­nies like Sky­ports, Sky­portz, Lil­i­um and Fer­rovial (to name just a few) are mak­ing strides in build­ing the phys­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry net­works in which these sites will oper­ate.”

Ver­ti­port Sup­port

Drake then moves on to the actu­al law mak­ers, those that attor­neys need to bow down to. He men­tions the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who passed the ‘Advanced Avi­a­tion Infra­struc­ture Mod­erni­sa­tion (AAIM) Act’ in June, that makes fund­ing grants up to USD25 mil­lion avail­able to “(1) assist an eli­gi­ble enti­ty to plan for the devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of infra­struc­ture nec­es­sary to facil­i­tate AAM oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States; and (2) make fund­ing avail­able for costs direct­ly relat­ed to con­struc­tion of pub­lic-use ver­ti­ports or asso­ci­at­ed infra­struc­ture’. Such amounts would be avail­able until the end of Sep­tem­ber, 2023.”

Drake says, “(This) is a real­ly sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward for the indus­try. With some devel­op­ers tar­get­ing 2024 as the launch date for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions, this scheme will help to tur­bo-charge devel­op­ment of sup­port infra­struc­ture in the US over the course of these crit­i­cal next two years, cre­at­ing jobs and oppor­tu­ni­ties along the way.”

Ver­ti­port Analy­sis

SMG Con­sult­ing and Ser­gio Cecutta’s AAM Real­i­ty Index now gains a big tick from Drake, as he refers to the most recent addi­tion AIR or the ‘AAM Infra­struc­ture Readi­ness Index’. evtolinsights.com has writ­ten a fair amount about this devel­op­ment in recent weeks.

SMG’s Con­sult­ing ‘AAM Real­i­ty Index’ wel­comes new addi­tion – Ver­ti­ports: Inter­view with Founder Ser­gio Cecut­ta

Drake remarks, “While the index cur­rent­ly lists only five com­pa­nies, SMG is work­ing on cov­er­age for an addi­tion­al 15, which will help the indus­try and its financiers to bet­ter gauge and mon­i­tor readi­ness as the launch of com­mer­cial eVTOL oper­a­tions approach­es.”

It warms the heart when one of the largest law firms in the world shows such inter­est in the eVTOL Indus­try. It may be for pure­ly mon­e­tary rea­sons, but ‘every lit­tle helps’ as a cer­tain UK super­mar­ket chain might say.

(News Source: https://www.lexology.com/)

(Top pic: Volo­copter)