While the advanced air mobility sector has concentrated on aircraft certification as its primary hurdle, a new analysis suggests that vertiport infrastructure may be the more critical and time-consuming constraint. Lisa Wright, founder of Landings and a real estate professional building a vertiport network across rural North America, contends that the industry is repeating a mistake made by the electric vehicle industry: producing vehicles faster than the supporting infrastructure can be built.
Automakers delivered electric cars years before charging networks were adequate, leaving early adopters with range anxiety not because the vehicles failed, but because charging infrastructure was fragmented and underfunded. Advanced air mobility faces the same challenge with added complexity, as vertiport development requires land agreements, community approvals, utility connections, and energy assessments, each carrying multi-year timelines. “All the focus was on the aircraft, which gave time to build the thesis and have conversations,” Wright explained. For property owners and municipalities, the consequence is concrete: even once aircraft are certified, commercial service cannot begin without prepared landing sites. Developers who assumed vertiports could be built quickly after aircraft approval are discovering that lead times run in years, not months.
Energy infrastructure, particularly for rural or semi-rural locations, represents the most underappreciated bottleneck. Grid connections to remote landing sites can take years through utility providers, while off-grid solar and battery systems require procurement timelines that don’t align with early deployment urgency. To bridge the gap, some operators are exploring mobile charging units: trucks capable of delivering on-demand power to landing sites before permanent solutions are in place. “Energy is still the real bottleneck,” Wright says. “Sometimes the timeline on getting that equipment can be longer than expected. But locations being built in underserved areas face energy constraints because of where they’re located.” This temporary solution addresses a practical problem: if an aircraft manufacturer wants to conduct a landing on short notice, energy infrastructure gaps don’t become a blocking issue. For operators focused on urban or airport-adjacent locations, grid access is generally available; for those building in smaller cities and rural corridors, energy logistics become a primary design challenge.
Because vertiport development requires years of community engagement, regulatory navigation, and energy planning, operators who started early hold positions that new entrants cannot match on short timelines. “It’s actually very difficult and time-consuming to build infrastructure on the ground,” Wright notes. “Anybody who wants to start now is going to take years to catch up with groups who have been ahead of this.” This dynamic is becoming visible as the FAA’s EIPP program launches operations this summer and manufacturers plan actual deployments. Operators with secured location agreements, community approvals, and energy solutions can offer manufacturers immediately ready sites. The potential consequence is a split between operators who can move quickly because their infrastructure work is underway, and those starting from scratch. In a sector where aircraft certification timelines keep shifting, the ability to offer a network of prepared landing sites may prove the most durable competitive position.
For communities and property owners considering vertiport agreements, the calculus is straightforward. Aircraft certification will eventually arrive, and service will flow to locations where infrastructure already exists. The infrastructure being built now determines which communities have access when commercial operations begin.
