Urban-Air Port Thought Leaders - The Board of Advisors Speak Out
#001 Richard Matthews
The former Arup Director and UKIMEA Aviation Sector Leader, with a career spanning over 44 years at Arup - tells us what’s on his mind.
Richard was one of Urban-Air Ports first Advisory Board members and was instrumental in the successful delivery of our Generation1 - AirOne vertiport in April last year.
“With the development of new opportunities presented by urban air mobility (UAM) we face an important challenge in predicting how the technology will develop and be used in the future.
In addressing these challenges we are making decisions, investments and setting standards that will determine the long-term future direction of development. Changing direction later could be expensive.
And so it is important in the development of our ideas for UAM that we carefully consider the balance between extrapolation of existing thinking and openly investigating the new, innovative opportunities presented by this exciting new transport technology.
The risk I see with too many proposed vertiport designs is that they are either based on extrapolation of existing helicopter-based solutions which are both wasteful of urban space and miss the deeper opportunities presented by eVTOL or they dream of designs that ignore all practical operational, environmental and safety needs that will have to be satisfied to make an urban network of vertiports into a viable transport network.
Through careful research and consultation with OEMs, aerodynamicists, city planners and facility operators, Urban-Air Port have successfully combined innovation and opportunity with the needs of a successful commercial operation. Their successful technology prototype “AirOne” including its “Vertical Airfield” certified & constructed in Coventry City Centre was a clear demonstration of how the right design gets the support of the City Authorities, Civil Aviation Authorities as well as huge industry and Government support.
The final requirement to make a success of urban air mobility is the need for public support. The 15000 public visitors in Coventry demonstrated that Urban-Air Port had successfully addressed the core requirements for successful introduction of eVTOL networks into real city environments.
The requirements of an airport or other urban / suburban locations will of course be different to Coventry but the skill, innovation and efficiency that the Urban-Air Port team brought to developing that prototype will, I believe, be an important part of the success of the global advanced air mobility challenge.”
