U.S. airport management group Avports this week signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to join Jaunt Air Mobility’s Access Skyways initiative to lay the groundwork for commercial operations of Jaunt’s family of eVTOL aircraft. Avports said it will help airport owners, government agencies, and other stakeholders to implement the steps needed to make air transport more environmentally sustainable.
Jaunt launched the Access Skyways initiative in October 2020 as an alliance for companies focused on developing the required infrastructure for eVTOL flights, including vertiports. It is working to bring its Journey air taxi vehicle into commercial service in 2026, offering a range of 80 to 100 miles with a pilot and four passengers on board.
The Access Skyways partners are focused on aspects of the so-called advanced air mobility (AAM) ecosystem, including data analysis of projected operational requirements, infrastructure design, analysis of supply-and-demand factors, electrification requirements, aircraft maintenance and repair provision, and the potential to use existing airports and heliports. “As a company, we recognize the importance of developing operational requirements to design safe and accessible vertiports, and our Access Skyways partners bring significant experience to the process—from concept to operations,” said Jaunt’s chief commercial officer, Simon Briceno.
The Avports group, which was founded back in 1927 as the infrastructure division of Pan American World Airways, manages and operates more than 30 U.S. airports. These include Albany, Stewart, Republic, and Westchester County in New York state, Teterboro in New Jersey, New Haven in Connecticut, Gary Chicago International in Indiana, Moffett in California, and Detroit Metro in Michigan.
“An AAM-enabled future cannot be built by working in silos,” commented Avports chief operating officer Arturo García-Alonso, speaking at last week’s Vertical Flight Society Transformative Vertical Flight event in San Jose, California. “Preparing for this future requires that all stakeholders— airports included—talk to and learn from each other, which is exactly what Access Skyways intends to do.”
For Avports, the imperative to make air transport more environmentally sustainable means transitioning away from the fossil fuel-based vehicles and machinery currently being used for day-to-day airport operations and towards zero-emission fleets. The company is already working with Revo Zero, a hydrogen refueling network, to retrofit a shuttle bus at New Haven Airport with a hydrogen fuel cell electric motor. It is also exploring how to best provide onsite, resilient, renewably sourced power generation at their locations.
“The future of air travel has to be environmentally friendly and sustainable, and this includes not only the aircraft but also the airports they operate from,” said Avports CEO Jorge Roberts. “A sustainable future is coming, and through initiatives like the Access Skyways Alliance, we’ll help lead the way in bringing all-electric air taxis to zero-emission airports.”
Avports is joining existing alliance partners including aerospace and defense group BAE Systems, PS&S Integrated Services, an architectural and engineering firm with experience in vertiport design, and Price Systems, which specializes in predictive cost modeling and has the capability to calculate passenger demand for air taxi services.
