Vertiports—ground facilities for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) aircraft—are similar in concept to heliports but designed to accommodate the specific demands of AAM operations, such as higher‑volume passenger and cargo operations. While safety principles remain unchanged, the scale and complexity of operations introduced by AAM are significant changes.
Unlike today’s low-density helicopter traffic, AAM aircraft—many of them uncrewed—will operate in dense, low-altitude corridors near urban centers, potentially stressing the air traffic control (ATC) system if no changes are implemented to how this traffic is managed. This highlights a critical challenge: current Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) systems aren’t built to manage the volume of low-altitude operations proposed by AAM, with operations also requiring greater trajectory and schedule predictability due to battery constrains.
To ensure safe integration, we must treat AAM as an air traffic challenge, not just an aircraft challenge. This requires new automation tools to give ANSPs real-time situational awareness, decision support, and new methods of managing low-altitude traffic at scale.
New Aircraft, New Airspace Demands
AAM needs to operate in a way that is conducive to the energy limitations of new aircraft like eVTOLs. Picture a helicopter today that is flying towards a landing site that is located near a major airport. If the airspace around the airport is congested, the helicopter may be given instructions to hold over certain places or stay away from certain areas to avoid other aircraft. Since AAM flights have limited loitering ability due to their low energy reserves, these kinds of instructions will not be suitable for AAM operations. Therefore, we need new air traffic management (ATM) tools that offer better predictability for AAM operations, ensuring minimum deviations from planned flight times.
SkyGrid exists to support the integration of emerging operations within these new operational constraints. Our system ensures ANSPs can integrate AAM in a way that is both predictable and non-disruptive to existing operations. Download our ANSP one-pager to learn more.
Altering the Situational Awareness Loop
Under current flight rules, pilots often rely on looking outside the window as a means to see and avoid hazards, obstacles, other aircraft, and bad weather. Uncrewed AAM aircraft operating without an onboard pilot will therefore need to become situationally aware through different methods that rely on data, sensors, and ground-based technology.
Terrain and obstacles like mountains and buildings don’t move, so a database on the aircraft can be used for avoidance. But traffic is dynamic, so a robust system is needed to replace the pilot’s ability to see and avoid hazards. Traffic awareness can be replicated using digital solutions like the ones SkyGrid provides—capabilities that allow ANSPs to share high-quality surveillance data with aircraft in flight.
ANSPs Adapting to the Shift
The procedures and techniques that controllers use today for managing low-altitude traffic likely won’t suffice for high-density AAM operations. Today, ATC manages low-altitude helicopter traffic primarily through visual clearances and voice communications, but these methods require a lot of controller-pilot coordination that doesn’t scale well when the number of aircraft in the airspace increases.
In the United States, helicopters in major airspaces are often managed by a dedicated tower controller who’s responsible for talking to these helicopters and using visual separation to keep them safely separated from other aircraft. If the tower controller were to manage an increasing number of these operations, as in the case of AAM, the use of visual separation may eventually not be able to meet safety targets. A greater degree of awareness, surveillance, and automation is needed to maintain the same level of safety for operations in this low-altitude airspace.
As a high-assurance data service provider and ATM automation platform, SkyGrid’s system can help ANSPs adapt to this operational shift. Our services are designed to use real-time surveillance data including radar and ADS-B. Our decision support tools will help ANSPs determine which pre-defined routes AAM aircraft should fly, and our conformance monitoring service will alert controllers of aircraft deviations during a flight.
Redefining the Role of ANSPs
On the road to an integrated AAM future, automation supporting ANSP systems will evolve in phases. At the beginning, SkyGrid’s system will provide ANSPs with the data and decision support tools needed to integrate aircraft in their current airspace structures while minimizing the number of interactions required between aircraft and controllers.
In the long term, SkyGrid’s system will allow ANSPs to take a more strategic position in managing AAM traffic in their airspace, instead of managing every aircraft individually. In this future, the SkyGrid system may be used by ANSPs to implement high-level control actions to AAM airspace, such as setting airspace capacity limits and times of operation. Within the AAM airspace, the SkyGrid system will support automated traffic management without traditional air traffic services.
Today, SkyGrid is collaborating with ANSPs worldwide to develop airspace automation roadmaps tailored to their specific airspace structures, procedures, and operational needs.
