Mini Airport Pitches Future of Hybrid Travel

On April 25, 2022, Urban-Air Port and Supernal unveiled the Air-One in the United Kingdom. The Air-One is a proprietary deployable operations hub that could provide quick multimodal infrastructure for eVTOLS and other passenger travel – think small turnkey airport, or, as they call it, a vertiport. Unfortunately, this one is for viewing purposes only, though they plan to hold drone demos to show potential advanced air mobility (AAM) use case scenarios. The Air-One is a 17,000 square-foot circular structure built in just 11 weeks and designed to serve four markets: passenger air taxis, autonomous delivery drones, disaster emergency management and defense operations and logistics. The vertiport has zones to serve these various purposes, so it has a passenger lounge, security screening, café and retail space, as well as a cargo logistics hub, electric and hydrogen-air vehicle hangar, passenger taxi processing and control center. The middle of the vertiport is a 56-foot circular final approach and takeoff platform that raises 19 feet in the sky using a small link-lift system for takeoffs and landings.