The FAA has issued the first conditional approval for a vertiport at the Blackstone Army Airfield (KBKT) in Blackstone, Virginia. The action will enable the airport to establish the first licensed public-use vertiport in the state and the nation. KBKT is a dual-use airport for military and civilian flight operations.
Navos Air, a Virginia-based air navigation services company, was the proponent of the vertiport, as part of a project funded by the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC) through the Virginia Commonwealth Center of Innovation for Autonomous Systems grant program. Navos specializes in the development and maintenance of non-Part 97 (special) satellite-based performance-based navigation instrument flight procedures and heliport evaluation. The company has extensive experience in military aviation, air ambulance services, airborne research, and uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) aviation and research.
After the Virginia Department of Aviation licenses it, the vertiport will be used as part of research on an end-to-end concept of operations that Navos developed based on modifying and designing terminal instrument procedures and en-route infrastructure for UAS and advanced air mobility (AAM) use cases. Vertiports serve as the anchors to that system.
“Leveraging existing approved infrastructure methods modified for new use cases and research applications will enable AAM operations sooner while providing opportunities to inform the development of future air traffic management systems and facilities,” said Matt Burton, technical director at Navos. The company was the proponent of the vertiport as part of a research project using UAS to represent larger AAM vehicles for instrument flight operations research. These special instrument procedures can potentially deliver UAS/AAM to airport locations, off-airport locations, and newly established vertiports and facilitate the safe integration of emerging airspace users with legacy users.
Earlier this year, VIPC conducted an economic impact study with Nexa Advisors of McLean, Virginia. The study projects that the AAM industry in the state has the potential to generate $16 billion in new business activity and create more than 17,000 full-time jobs during the next 23 years. By 2045, it is anticipated that over 7.7 million passengers annually, equivalent to more than 21,000 passengers per day, will travel in AAM aircraft within Virginia.