FutureFlight On The Radar
Airports Urged To Make Advanced Air Mobility and Electric Aircraft a Key Part of Their Future
Airport development specialist WSP is helping to ensure that gaps in long-term infrastructure planning don't stand in the way of new eVTOL and eSTOL aircraft.

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.