Welkin Aero announces plans to introduce urban air mobility in Southern Africa

Welkin Aero, which focus­es on the sup­port, design and devel­op­ment of ver­ti­port and ver­ti­pad infra­struc­ture, is to review project plans for a group of heli­ports along a spe­cif­ic air route in South­ern Africa — as part of a new urban air mobil­i­ty plan for the region.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ver­ti-Go Solu­tions and strate­gic part­ners AM Risk Solu­tions, Slick Hold­ings, ARFF South Africa and oth­er role play­ers, the announce­ment comes after renewed inter­est from glob­al Angel Investors, which has respond­ed to a fea­si­bil­i­ty study first drawn up in 2016.

It said there is real­is­tic demand for a heli­copter refu­elling solu­tion between Johan­nes­burg and Dur­ban air route in South Africa, pro­vid­ed it also incor­po­rates future plan­ning for glob­al eVTOL devel­op­ers and their air­craft.

Jo Nie­man, Direc­tor of Welkin Aero, explained a lot of time and mon­ey has already been invest­ed in engi­neer­ing designs which involved many hours of aer­i­al sur­vey­ing to scout loca­tions, study­ing mete­o­ro­log­i­cal data and engag­ing with avi­a­tors, landown­ers and munic­i­pal author­i­ties — to eval­u­ate the data and look at fac­tors such as safe­ty, approach paths, obsta­cles and the envi­ron­ment.

He said: “No two loca­tions have the same dynam­ics and loca­tion is key but safe­ty is the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty above all. It’s a del­i­cate bal­ance that I have come across many times when project plan­ning heli­pads. Out of 20 sites inspect­ed so far, we’ve only iden­ti­fied five that tick all the box­es.

“If we can­not bring pos­i­tive change or some sort of val­ue to every­one involved, then we see no val­ue in doing it at all.”

Phase one will involves a dual pur­pose heli­port and ver­ti­port to be locat­ed north of the town of Har­ri­smith in South Africa and also includes ‘satel­lite helistops’, with the first ones being con­sid­ered in either the Bergville or Win­ter­ton region to accom­mo­date the demand for a South African CAA-reg­is­tered, safe and reli­able refu­elling loca­tion along the air route which is used by pri­vate and com­mer­cial oper­a­tors.

Nie­man has said heli­ports and helistops were part of a ‘much big­ger pic­ture’ and the plan­ning brief giv­en to design­ers and part­ners was to future proof heli­ports to ensure they can also serve as ver­ti­ports for emerg­ing eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy in the near future.

He already met oth­er urban air mobil­i­ty entre­pre­neurs and eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers in order to bring back lessons learnt, but also to engage with poten­tial investors who have expressed an inter­est in the project.

“It’s ear­ly days, but it’s also an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to solve two prob­lems at the same time by sat­is­fy­ing an imme­di­ate demand and pave the way to the future for any devel­op­ers who wish to bring their eVTOL craft to South­ern Africa”, Nie­man said.

“We have engaged with two dif­fer­ent Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ties in South­ern Africa, which are well aware of our inten­tions and have called on us in the past to advise them on urban air mobil­i­ty mat­ters.

“We will con­tin­ue to work close­ly with these author­i­ties as things progress because they are just as excit­ed about the future, the employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, ease of trans­port and numer­ous oth­er ben­e­fits it will bring.”