Wisk Partners With City of Fullerton “to Advance Autonomous Air Mobility in Southern California”

Wisk Aero announced this week a part­ner­ship with the City of Fuller­ton, Cal­i­for­nia to part­ner with poten­tial infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment for autonomous air taxis in the future, at Fuller­ton Munic­i­pal Air­port, reports a press release. 

The col­lab­o­ra­tion, signed via a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU), estab­lish­es a frame­work of oper­a­tions for Wisk’s autonomous, elec­tric air taxi ser­vice, in the Los Ange­les-Orange Coun­ty met­ro­pol­i­tan area.

Under the MOU, Wisk and the City of Fuller­ton (FUL) are to col­lab­o­rate on a series of key projects, includ­ing:-

: Infra­struc­ture and Plan­ning - Wisk will pro­vide tech­ni­cal advice for the City on ver­ti­port require­ments for its autonomous oper­a­tions, includ­ing require­ments cov­er­ing Instru­ment Flight Rules routes. FUL is to incor­po­rate autonomous AAM (Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty) and UAM (Urban Air Mobil­i­ty) into its plan­ning for the air­port, elec­tri­cal grid and air­space, while also devel­op­ing pol­i­cy path­ways for oper­a­tions such as per­mit­ting and com­mu­ni­ty noise lev­el guide­lines.

: Oper­a­tional and Com­mer­cial Plan­ning - To joint­ly eval­u­ate infra­struc­ture and plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tions, explore oppor­tu­ni­ties for train­ing and main­te­nance facil­i­ties at FUL air­port, and define com­mer­cial terms for Wisk’s oper­a­tions.

: Pol­i­cy and Reg­u­la­tion - Togeth­er review cur­rent munic­i­pal poli­cies and land-use codes to rec­om­mend nec­es­sary amend­ments to enable future autonomous AAM oper­a­tions.

: Region­al Col­lab­o­ra­tion - Explore part­ner­ships with oth­er poten­tial ver­ti­port sites across South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, to facil­i­tate route plan­ning and sup­port appli­ca­tions for fed­er­al, state and local grants, to fund infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment.

Fuller­ton Sub­urb

Jeff Ball, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Orange Coun­ty Busi­ness Coun­cil, com­ment­ed, “The Coun­cil con­tin­ues to advo­cate for inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies that dri­ve our region’s eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness. This part­ner­ship is a good exam­ple of the for­ward-think­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions that will keep Orange Coun­ty at the fore­front of tech­nol­o­gy and trans­porta­tion.”

He con­tin­ued, “It marks the start of a sus­tain­able air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem, one that will cre­ate high-qual­i­ty jobs, strength­en con­nec­tions between com­mu­ni­ties, and fur­ther posi­tion Orange Coun­ty as a leader in the future of mobil­i­ty.”

The agree­ment is to also unlock poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tions with oth­er ver­ti­port sites to cre­ate a region­al net­work that will even­tu­al­ly serve pas­sen­gers through­out this dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed region.

Emi­lien Marc­hand, Region­al Lead of Ecosys­tem Part­ner­ships at Wisk, remarked, “This part­ner­ship is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the prac­ti­cal steps need­ed to bring autonomous flight to life. Our joint work will not only assess the fea­si­bil­i­ty of AAM at FUL, but also help define the stan­dards and process­es for the entire indus­try, while build­ing a blue­print on how cities can suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grate AAM into their trans­porta­tion net­works.”

Emi­lien Marc­hand

This part­ner­ship builds on a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the City of Long Beach, South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in Octo­ber 2023, when Wisk car­ried out a pub­lic flight demon­stra­tion. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://wisk.aero/

https://www.cityoffullerton.com

(Top image: Graph­ic of Wisk Aero fly­ing over Fuller­ton City)

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