EXCLUSIVE: Strong political champions drive advanced air mobility

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Innovation & Technology Regulation Unmanned Urban Air Mobility AAM Dubai Skyports

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Skyports chief executive Duncan Walker heads a company that builds and operates airports designed for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft – the machines that will ultimately deliver advanced air mobility. As a vision of future transport, autonomous eVTOL flights carrying goods or passengers is about as futuristic as it gets.

Self-evidently, there are many huge challenges to be overcome to make this vision happen, and the supply of certificated aircraft that will make use of Skyports’ facilities is just one of them. Speaking to FINN at this week’s Connected Places summit in London, Walker listed the perhaps obvious needs of a “vertiport” as land, financing, lots of electricity, airspace management and good relations with neighbours – because the best sites will tend to be in congested areas, hardly surprising for a business model that depends on delivering convenient transport with vehicles that have, for the foreseeable future, very limited range.

But he is absolutely clear about the biggest single challenge facing Skyports: “political sponsorship”. To deliver AAM means weaving together many threads, he says: “We need a strong political champion.”

So perhaps it’s no surprise that Skyports expects to see Dubai, where strong political leadership has built what is arguably the world’s principal hub for conventional aviation, become the first city in the world to host an electric air taxi service. That service could be running as soon as 2026, according to an agreement between Skyports, Dubai’s Road Transport Authority and electric aircraft developer Joby Aviation, signed at the 2023 World Governments Summit in Dubai and endorsed with the physical presence of no less a political champion than His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai, Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates.

As Walker told FINN, for AAM Dubai has an unmatched “sense of direction that is a champion at the top”. And, he adds, with top-level clarity and consistency it is possible to operate at pace. Similar momentum is building, he adds, in Japan and Korea.

In retrospect, though, all of those places have come as surprises to Walker. When he wrote the Skyports business plan six years ago, he says, it was built around big US markets and London. But today, perhaps amazingly, Los Angeles is no longer on the list – for lack of the strong political vision needed to put together all the elements of a complicated project.
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