With a $2.5 billion expansion ongoing at San Antonio International Airport and investments in flying taxi infrastructure underway at Port San Antonio, local and state aviation leaders say the city can help lead the nation in incorporating next-generation flying technologies.
Officials from the city’s aviation department, the port, the Texas Department of Transportation and industry provided updates at San Antonio Mobility Coalition’s annual State of Aviation event held at Boeing Center at Tech Port at the Southwest Side tech campus.
The conversation revolved around advanced air mobility — the concept of small, automated aircraft, often powered by electricity, that are envisioned as being used to quickly shuttle people and goods.
The next-generation aircraft, known as eVTOLs, short for electric vertical takeoff and landing, are still in development and awaiting regulatory approvals, but the work to develop infrastructure and ways to incorporate the technology into the nation’s current systems are underway.
“The question is not whether (advanced air mobility) is going to happen. It’s happening now,” said Dan Harmon, TxDOT’s aviation division director. “The question is where, when and how it integrates in the National Airspace System, and just as importantly, who does it.”
The port has been positioning itself to be an air taxi hub of the future, already investing $42 million on airfield and airport upgrades to prepare for the region’s first vertiport. It’s partnered with SkyGrid LLC, a subsidiary of Boeing Co.’s Wisk Aero, on development.
According to Harmon, Kelly Field and the port “are fundamental pieces to the solution that allow Texas to support early and intermediate integration of (advanced air mobility) into the National Airspace System.”
The port is part of a state program to develop flights paths for the futuristic aircraft that will connect San Antonio, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston. That project is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program that has a presence in 25 states.
“Texas is uniquely positioned to lead this charge and bring (advanced air mobility) into the national focus,” Harmon said at Friday’s event. “We may not be the first, but we are going to be the biggest, and we are going to be the best.”
San Antonio International Airport also is preparing for the next-generation aircraft with plans to create a vertiport on the roof of a new garage that’s part of the airport’s ongoing expansion.
“We started that in 2022 when we were doing the master planning work,” said Jesus Saenz, the director of airports for San Antonio. “We could see that that was going to happen as we were playing visionaries into 2030 and 2040.”
Jim Perschbach, president and CEO of the port and the area’s biggest cheerleader for advanced air mobility, would rather spend money to develop revenue-generating amenities such as childcare centers or grocery stores than building transportation infrastructure like parking garages, and he thinks flying taxis can help.
“From a developer standpoint, every time we have to build a new parking structure here on the campus, it’s $20 (million), $40 million really non-revenue-generating space,” he said. “And if you could just better manage that airspace, what you can do is you can bring aircraft that essentially function as augmentation of a municipal transportation system.”
He envisions the small, dronelike aircraft someday flying from hubs such as parking lots to various destinations, which could save millions in infrastructure costs.
He said that we’re in “that third generation, fourth generation of aviation, where we’re going to start blurring the lines between surface transportation and aeronautical transportation to make this world not only a more efficient place, but to do the same thing Kelly (Field) did, which was create and drive economic prosperity into this community.”
According to Perschbach, Kelly Field is a “unicorn” in the airport world that’s perfect for testing out the new technologies. The military-civilian field handles large aircraft but no commercial passenger traffic. The setup allows for testing and associated flight restrictions without affecting commercial flights.
The port has been in discussions with the Air Force to take control of Kelly Field as part of a larger deal that also includes moving the service’s cyber headquarters from nearby Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland to the campus.
“If we do that, that opens up something that nobody else in the world has, which is the ability to have a full international civilian and military airport where you can stand up (waivers and operating areas) in the right type of test environments, and you can see whether or not that interferes with the (instrument landing systems) and the (radars) and everything else,” he said.
The state of aviation in San Antonio today is a “roller coaster,” he said, but the city is positioned to play a major role in the next generation of aviation as it has in the past.
At Kelly Field in 1925, “nobody knew what airplanes were going to be — they just knew they were important,” he said.
https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/san-antonio-flying-taxi-evtol-texas-22234345.php