Brisbane Firms as Australian Debut City for Air Taxis

Concept images for a riverfront vertiport in Brisbane have been released as the city firms as favourite to launch the air taxi industry sector in Australia.

Australian developer Skyportz released the images of the vertiport on the Brisbane River at the annual Advanced Air Mobility summit held on the Gold Coast.

Skyports said that with the Olympic and Paralympic Games to be hosted by Brisbane in 2032, as well as what it called strong support from all levels of government to develop advanced air mobility, the region was shaping up as the Australian launch market.

The renders show the veritport moored off the northern bank of the Brisbane River, near one of the city’s tallest towers, 1 William Street.

Chief executive Clem Newton-Brown said they believed that natural aviation corridors such as river were the “lowest hanging fruit for retrofitting vertiports into urban areas”.

“While there are a small number of cities around the world that have developed rooftop helipads, they are not the easiest places to safely land aircraft,” he said.

“There are usually better options, particularly in waterfront cities”.

The firm’s vertiport designs were produced with Contreras Earl Architecture, in collaboration with UK firms Pascall+Watson and Minmud.

Skyportz said it had been working with 2021 Australian Scientist of the Year Abdulghani Mohamed on wind and turbulence modelling in cities and trialling specific sites.

“We keep coming back to waterfront locations as being the safest and most logical place to install new vertiports in large cities when it comes to turbulence,” Newton-Brown said.

▲ Using natural corridors such as rivers brings advantages, according to Skyportz.

Also at the summit, Australian air regulator CASA released the Australian Summit vertiport guidelines, which signalled a commitment to advanced air mobility in Australia, according to the Skyportz chief.

The CASA guidelines envisage that new vertiports would exclude helicopters to assist with developing community support for advanced air mobility (AAM).

“This will give the industry an opportunity to demonstrate to the community that a vertiport may be more desirable than a heliport,” Newton-Brown said.

“If communities are going to accept AAM as an industry, then gaining this ‘social licence’ is vitally important.

“With the guidance for vertiports clearly excluding the use of helicopters, we hope that local councils and communities will be more accepting to AAM in their localities”.