What do you call an airport for flying taxis?
And this week, we took a step closer to the option of catching a flying taxi.
Air-One resides in Coventry, UK.
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Urban-Air Port erected the 17,000 square-foot radial Air-One in just 11 weeks.
The site divides into fully outfitted zones.
It uses a compact, state-of-the-art, synchronized link-lift system to enable future electric air vehicle take-offs and landing.
The vertiport has Supernals initial concept eVTOL vehicle, S-A1, on display in the vehicle hangar.
Vertiport infrastructure is lagging
This week also came with the news of vertiport investment.
Urban-Air Port secured investment from Supernal.
So, how are we going to depart and disembark?
While Urban-Air Port has created a dedicated aircraft space in Conventry, its not the only approach.
- Building dedicated spaces such as Air-One.
Archer Aviation has struck a similar deal with REEF.
With theM7 Real Estateinvestment, its foreseeable that Urban-Air Port is also imagining vertiports on top of buildings.
These include:
Numbers:How many aircraft fit into the vertiport approach and take-off area (FATO)?
Most companies are aiming for a large fleet that departs with mere minutes between take-offs and landings.
This requires a lot of parking bays for aircraft and a place for eVTOL aircraft to recharge.
Passenger processing:Also tied into safety is passenger processing.
Uber Elevate proposes a turnaround time of five minutes in between departing passengers and the next vertiport take-off.
It is logistically questionable.
Security:What bang out of screening will take place before passengers board?
Battery charging times:Aircraft need somewhere to recharge at the vertiport.
Modes have different recharging needs and could take anything from 20 minutes to one hour.
Currently, theres no interoperability between batteries used by different VTOL aircraft.
Standardization:Different kinds of VTOLs are in different sizes and configurations.
This makes vertiport standardization impossible.
VTOLsare coming, but theyll only be able to take flight with the right infrastructure.
Until vertiports roll out globally, VTOL wings and rotors are clipped.
Story byCate Lawrence
Cate Lawrence is an Australian tech journo living in Berlin.
