en.Wedoany.com Reported - Urban-Air Port (UAP) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sarla Aviation to jointly develop the infrastructure and operational framework for India's Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) market.
As the world's most populous country, India is at a critical juncture to become a key AAM market. A complete ecosystem requires not only aircraft but also infrastructure, operational, and regulatory frameworks—including vertiports, charging facilities, passenger processing, and airspace integration—to ensure safe and scalable commercial flights become viable.
Under the collaboration, both parties will jointly integrate UAP's vertiport infrastructure with Sarla Aviation's Shunya aircraft platform, develop a phased roadmap for deploying vertiports across Indian cities, engage with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to support future commercial vertiport operations, and assess potential deployment sites in major metropolitan areas and strategic state-designated zones.
Andrea Wu, CEO of Urban-Air Port, stated that the real challenge for advanced air mobility lies not in individual demonstration sites but in network-scale commercialization. Four vertiports do not constitute a transportation system. While most industry efforts remain focused on aircraft certification, UAP has spent the past seven years concentrating on the infrastructure, operations, and deployment models needed to support AAM at scale. For AAM to succeed, the industry requires repeatable, rapidly deployable infrastructure that integrates into existing cities and scales in tandem with demand.
UAP is the team behind the AirOne project, the world's first fully operational advanced air mobility hub demonstrator, showcased in Coventry, UK, in April 2022. AirOne successfully integrated aircraft operations, charging infrastructure, passenger processing, and regulatory coordination, operating in a real urban environment. UAP also has experience delivering projects with global aerospace and mobility partners such as Honda, Supernal, and Airbus.
By combining UAP's rapidly deployable vertiport infrastructure and operational expertise with Sarla Aviation's Shunya eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) platform, the two companies will jointly develop the infrastructure, operational framework, and deployment strategies needed to support the commercial rollout of advanced air mobility services across India. As aircraft programs move toward certification, infrastructure maturity becomes increasingly critical. The shared focus is to ensure that vertiport deployment, operational planning, and regulatory alignment progress in parallel, so that when Shunya enters commercial service, the ecosystem supporting it is ready to scale.
Wu added that India's population, ambition, and urban growth position it to become one of the world's most significant AAM markets, potentially pioneering commercial deployment at a meaningful scale. Sarla Aviation is building an aircraft designed specifically for India, while Urban-Air Port has spent years tackling infrastructure challenges. Together, they can move beyond demonstrations and begin building a true network.
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