Major airport infrastructure projects can take anywhere from five to 20 years, with the associated capital investment periods generally running over five years. Given that no major airport in the world currently appears to have an active plan to add vertiports for eVTOL aircraft, this begs the question as to how the companies promising commercial flights from 2025 propose to access these vital gateways.
This is the conundrum being addressed by major civil engineering groups like WSP that are seeking to prepare airports to play their part in the highly anticipated if overhyped advanced air mobility (AAM) sector. The U.S. company’s senior aviation planner and technical principal, Gaël Le Bris, is helping Philadelphia International Airport to include provisions for vertiports in its new master plan.
Under commissions from the U.S. Transportation Research Board, WSP has developed planning documents for vertiports as part of the effort to find a place at airports for new electric aircraft. A pair of reports prepared under the board’s Airport Cooperative Research Program provide useful planning tools for airports seeking a piece of the action, namely Preparing Your Airport for Electric Aircraft and Hydrogen Technology and Urban Air Mobility: An Airport Perspective.
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