Vertiports and Landing Infrastructure

To fully realize their potential, eVTOLs, and delivery drones will depend on the availability of proper physical infrastructure, specifically vertiports. Vertiports serve as hubs and provide the necessary infrastructure for takeoff and landing, recharging, maintenance, and storage. The design and capabilities of vertiports will play a crucial role in ensuring the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of AAM, making them an integral part of the future of air mobility and transportation as a whole.?

There are several types of ground infrastructures such as:

1. Drone Landing pads/stations - (on the ground, on top of building or on top of vehicles) usually represent the vendors or PoCs location. At these locations, small deliveries will be picked up or delivered to.

2. Drone Cargo Hubs - these are permanent structures like small fulfilment centers or specific logistics hubs (e.g. hospitals, pharmacies, pizza bakery, etc.). From/to this location, both, small and large cargo platforms transport small and big batches of cargo.

3. Vertipads/vertistops - these are for passenger eVTOLs what landing pads are for drones. They are rather minimalistic infrastructures, similar to a bus stop, with limited capacity in terms of flight movements, passenger handling and platform recharging. These structures can either be permanent or temporary.

4. Vertihubs - permanent structures comparable to regional airports today – however, with the clear goal to be present in urban city centers too. These structures are more complex, have greater capacity (flights per hour) and offer multiple charging poles, parking spots as well as cleaning and maintenance services.

5. AAM-Hubs - similar to today's airports and offer all the services not just for passenger eVTOLs, but also for small and big cargo platforms.

Among the top issues to consider are location, noise mitigation, power supply, maintenance, and any additional value to society that the vertiports would bring (e.g. shops, food, etc). This is perhaps one reason why all existing requirements for vertiport design are currently published as draft versions rather than complete regulations.

Find out more about vertiports as well as all components of AAM in our Advanced Air Mobility Report:

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