Thou Shalt …
The FAA has released a memorandum outlining its initial design guidelines for vertiports—infrastructure that will support Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) aircraft. The term Advanced Air Mobility is a neologism coined to describe air transport systems and concepts that integrate new, transformational aircraft designs and flight technologies into existing and modified airspace operations.
Titled Engineering Brief No. 105, Vertiport Design, the memorandum codifies—albeit preliminarily—the standards to which municipalities, airport owners and operators, and civil engineers will develop and construct the facilities from which Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) and Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (EVTOL) aircraft will arrive and depart, be fueled, charged, serviced, and hangered.
FAA Associate Administrator for Airports Shannetta Griffin states: “Our country is stepping into a new era of aviation. These vertiport design standards provide the foundation needed to begin safely building infrastructure in this new era.”
Included in the memorandum is guidance pertaining to the physical dimensions and load-bearing capacity of vertiport touchdown and liftoff areas; the designation of VTOL arrival and departure corridors; and the design and layout of lighting, markings and visual aids for arriving, departing, and taxiing VTOL aircraft.
The agency has also recommended the Vertiport Identification Symbol, a circle with four, tangential, quasi-cruciform protrusions at 360°, 090°, 180°, and 270° that will appear on aeronautical charts and publication and serve to identify a facility as a vertiport.
Owing to the anticipated—if not wholly advisable—rise of electric-powered flight, the FAA’s vertiport design memorandum addresses also the subjects of EVTOL charging and electric infrastructure, to include initial safety standards and guidelines germane to the maintenance, storage, and use of batteries and electrical charging equipment.
As vertiports are apt to be integrated into extant commercial airports, the memorandum specifies the distance by which vertiport facilities and AAM operations must be displaced from those of conventional aircraft. The FAA further stipulates standards for elevated vertiports—as will likely be constructed atop existing structures in urban areas.
Though imbued with the heft of FAA dictum, the guidance set forth in Engineering Brief No. 105—dated 21 September 2022—is pro forma, and shall remain binding only until such a time as the agency develops and issues performance-based vertiport design guidance. Final design standards will be predicated upon research conducted by the FAA, collaboration with AAM industry partners, and feedback from the public.
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