The advanced air mobility sector has long focused on aircraft certification as its primary hurdle, but according to industry experts, the real constraint is ground infrastructure. Lisa Wright, founder of Landings and a real estate professional building a vertiport network across rural North America, argues that vertiport development is both more urgent and more time-consuming than the industry has acknowledged. The comparison she draws is direct: the electric vehicle industry made the same mistake by producing vehicles faster than charging networks could support them.
Wright explains that vertiport development involves land agreements, community approvals, utility connections, and energy assessments, each carrying multi-year timelines. While Archer’s certification may slip to 2028 and Joby targets late 2026, even certified aircraft cannot begin commercial service without prepared landing sites. Developers who assumed vertiport infrastructure could be built quickly after aircraft approval are discovering lead times run in years, not months.
Energy infrastructure, particularly for rural or semi-rural locations, emerges as the most underappreciated bottleneck. Grid connections to remote sites can take years, and off-grid solar and battery systems require procurement timelines that don’t align with early commercial deployment urgency. To bridge the gap, some operators are exploring mobile charging units—trucks 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.”
For operators targeting urban or airport-adjacent locations, grid access is generally available. However, for those building in smaller cities, rural corridors, and underserved regions—the communities advanced air mobility is supposed to connect—energy logistics become a primary design challenge rather than an afterthought.
Wright emphasizes that the early-mover advantage is permanent. “It’s actually very difficult and time-consuming to build infrastructure on the ground,” she notes. “Anybody who wants to start now is going to take years to catch up with groups who have been ahead of this.” With the FAA’s EIPP program launching operations this summer and manufacturers beginning to plan actual deployments, the question of where aircraft will land is shifting from theoretical to operational. Operators who have secured location agreements, worked through community approvals, and solved energy problems in advance can offer manufacturers ready sites immediately.
The potential consequence is a split between operators who can move quickly because their infrastructure work is already 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—regardless of which manufacturer’s aircraft is ready first—may prove to be the most durable competitive position available.
For communities and property owners considering vertiport agreements, the calculus is straightforward: aircraft certification will eventually arrive, and when it does, service will flow to locations where infrastructure already exists, not to places that begin their multi-year approval process after the fact. The infrastructure being built now determines which communities have access when commercial operations begin.
