A National Strategy for Advanced Air Mobility

US Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy last week unveiled the country's first ever "Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Strategy," setting up a roadmap to help accelerate American aviation innovation and transform our skies. AAM is a rapidly-emerging aerospace sector focused on safely and efficiently integrating highly automated aircraft into US airspace. It involves a range of innovations — particularly new aircraft types that typically operate below 5,000 feet — to transport people and packages more efficiently than ever before.
Another key component of this initiative is infrastructure, and that's where Lisa Wright comes in. The Founder and CEO of Landings is focused on her firm's plan to develop a network of rural vertiports that expand access to advanced air mobility across the US. She explains how her firm's potential has quickly grown as the conversation moves from one-off vertiport projects to multi-site networks. She believes that stakeholders now see the strategic advantage of building coordinated, regional vertiport systems that can support cargo, emergency services, and eventually passenger movement — not just isolated landing pads. Lisa speaks with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio. The China focused business news
site Kaishin today reporting that what was actually this week
yesterday that China has unveiled draft rules to speed up
certification of EV tall aircraft. We're talking about electric vertical
takeoff and landing aircraft. You haven't been on one yet? Yeah, no,

(00:31):
neither of I. The story goes on to note though,
the regulatory competition with the US, siting industry executives for more.
We're joined once again by Lisa Wright. She's founder and
CEO of Landings. It's a company that says it's building
a landing in ground operations and network of verteports for
EV talls. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive
Brokers studio. Welcome back, Thank you for having me back.

(00:51):
The regulatory landscape is a really important part of this,
and I think last time you're on with us, you
said that the first passenger carrying EV talls will happen
in the Middle East, it won't happen here in the US.
Is that still the case?

Speaker 3 (01:03):
That is still the case. I mean, they are carrying
passengers in China, but the Middle East will be next,
and then the US is coming pretty close behind.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Is it a disadvantage in terms of the relatory environment
here versus other countries.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
No, the FAA has been working very hard. Actually, they've
streamlined and done a lot of fast tracking and changed
the training for pilots because there's going to be new
pilot training, et cetera. So I don't think the regulations
in the air has been an issue. It's just you know,
in Dubai and the UAE, they were more excited about
building the infrastructure first. So I'm very much about the infrastructure.

(01:40):
So that's why we're trying to build.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Well, let's talk about that because when we talk about
electric vehicles. We just did a story this week about
kind of how things are sliding backwards. And I think
initially early on, at least as so much of it
was the infrastructure wasn't there, the charging networks, and it
created anxiety among the consumers. So talk to us about
the infrastructure build out, where you guys are in this
process and what are some of the hurdles.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yeah, No, there's definitely a lot of hurdles. Number one
is energy. So getting access to energy is hard. We're
not really competing with data centers, but data centers are
looking for energy and areas that we're looking for energy
as well. So what we're doing is we have two
people on the team who are specifically looking at energy,
getting the equipment financed and working with utilities, but also

(02:28):
providing battery backup and energy systems in front of the
meter in order to take up the slack for the charging.
So charging is our number one issue. Really, finding land
is great, we can do that, but getting the energy
out and to your point, there's a lot of attention
being paid to EV networks right now that aren't necessarily succeeding.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Do you actually have to be connected to the grid
in order to charge? Could you create a sort of
self contained off the grid landing area that use it
renewable energy?

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Absolutely, So we use about one or two megawatts of
energy and you can get that from five to ten
acres of solar.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Okay, So there is.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
A way that we can do with solar. We can
store it exect in store with the battery and then
we can exactly use it for the peak when or
the demand when they land and need it.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
But you can't just rely on that alone, or can you?

Speaker 3 (03:23):
We could do that. I mean there's still grid connection
to most places.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
In Arizona or yeah, you know, I don't know parts
of California.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, yeah, So how do you see kind of this
building out and what's the cost involved? Like, how do
you do it? Is a public private partner, Like how
does it all get done?

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah? So the first network of twelve that we have
in Upstate New York is a mix of different use cases.
So we have agriculture, we have entertainment and casino, We
have existing airports. We also have some private public private
partnerships going on with communities for like medical purposes and
first responders. So there's a whole range of uses.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Now.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
A lot of the vertiports that you see right now,
they're very fancy. They're a column ZahaHadid buildings right Like,
they're amazing and futuristic, and they cost a lot of money. Yeah,
we're going to build two thousand of these, so we're
going to not make them cost a lot of money.
And how we're going to do that is because they're many,
they're very small, they're micro, they're about you know, an

(04:21):
acre and a half is the minimum space we need,
and we're going to put so many of them out
there in two thousand and not all of them will
have charging, but by having such a dense network, we'll
be able to guarantee landing spaces and charging within thirty
minutes of any spot you are.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
So, I think about air traffic control in a situation
such as this, and we spend a lot of time
over the past few years talking about shortages of air
traffic controllers. If we're sending more of vehicles into the air,
there's more of a need for air traffic controllers. How
does that factor into the estimate for how these things
are going to be filling the skies?

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah, no, air traffic control is really overwhelmed right now
with traditional flight. But because of the altitude that these
craft fly in, it's a different It's a different altitude
and it's different wavelength for communications, so they do not
have to use the existing air traffic control systems. There's
a company, a nonprofit in Syracuse called New Air that

(05:21):
is working on having all the demand for the airspace
for heavy drones and evytalls. So it's going to be
a completely different airspace.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Right, But you still have to have some coordination, don't you,
because eventually even those that are flying much higher have
to come down.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Absolutely absolutely, and when they are near airports or towered airports,
they still have to communicate with a tower and air
traffic control like normal mine. Because my locations are mostly rural,
very remote, they're not having the same conflict they're in
general airspace. But also the reason, one of the reasons
that we chose the Mohawk Valley upstate New York is

(06:00):
because this company, New Air, has one thousand miles of
air space that they're already working in, so there's drones
and all kinds of different things flying there already.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
The real estate agreements that you have in place, what
do they look like.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
So we do two different types of real estate agreements,
but what we're pushing for right now is just options.
So we're not leasing and we're not buying the property.
We're getting an option. It's much like a cell tower.
So in essence, we will take on then the feasibility studies,
the engineering, the build, will finance the equipment for the owner,
and once we're operating, then we'll share the revenue with them.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
So it's been how much a month or so since
we've talked. Yeah, what's the biggest change in that timeframe?

Speaker 3 (06:42):
The biggest change in the last month. There's been two.
But one is that everybody's stopped focusing on individual vertiports
and started talking about the network. Which is really key
for especially EV tolls, is you can't just go from
two points. It gets a little boring, right, you have
to have a lot of locations.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
I need one that goes from home in brook Yeah,
seven thirty one Lexington Avenue, Okay, in midtown Manhattan, dude,
you know, just South Brooklyn a little bit.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, maybe, yeah, you know, I mean, what are you
envision that? Like, we just got like fifteen seconds where
what's the what's the view you think? I don't know?
Is it five years, ten years?

Speaker 3 (07:20):
What's the vision five years from now? I believe everybody
would have got lose tribeline.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Okay, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
That's very cool. So first WEMO, Yeah, this has people.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
This has people fee a little bit better. Close my
eyes in amoth.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Lisa Right, founder and CEO of Landings, running us here
at the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio