Plans to open a vertiport to support advanced air mobility (AAM) operational trials are well advanced at the Paris-area Cergy-Pontoise Airport, with ground infrastructure developer Skyports indicating that the facility could be up and running by the end of June 2022. The UK-based group, which also provides commercial drone delivery services, is one of 30 partners in the Re.Invent Air Mobility initiative led by airports operator Groupe ADP, development agency Choose Paris Region, and the French capital's ground transportation provider, RATP.
The project organizers are working to launch eVTOL air taxi operations to start during the Paris Olympic Games in the summer of 2024. Aircraft developers including Airbus, EHang, Pipistrel, Vertical Aerospace, and Volocopter are participating in the project, which is supported by EASA and French civil aviation agency DGAC.
The Cergy-Pontoise vertiport will be used as a testbed to evaluate several aircraft and to support operational technology. Skyports is using a modular construction for the facility so that it can be dismantled and moved to another undisclosed location where the partners say it will serve as the first commercial vertiport in France. Groupe ADP, which is handling airside arrangements for the facility, owns and operates Cergy-Pontoise as well as the main Paris gateway airports, Charles de Gaulle, Orly, and Le Bourget.
“Our Pontoise airfield brings together a unique ecosystem around new air mobility, and the trial platform we are launching is unprecedented in Europe,” said Groupe ADP chairman and CEO Augustin de Romanet. “It will function as a concrete experiment to explore the field of possibilities of decarbonized and innovative aviation, and to develop a low-altitude aviation market, below 300 meters [984 feet], which has been largely unexplored until now.”
