The FAA recently released a new revision to the Helicopter\nDesign Guide (150\/5390-2D – Draft AC 150\/5390-2D, Heliport Design). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This draft provides standards for the planning, design and\nconstruction of heliports serving helicopters with single, tandem (front and\nrear) or dual (side by side) rotors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rex Alexander, President of Five-Alpha and the\ninfrastructure advisor to the Vertical Flight Society pointed out one rather\ninteresting caveat in Chapter-1 of the advisory circular draft where the FAA\nstates; \u201cThis guidance does not address landing areas for or operations by\nvertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft or unmanned aircraft<\/em>.\u201d Alexander went on to say that, \u201cgiven the\npresent landscape, I do not foresee a vertiport standard that directly\naddresses Urban Air Mobility and eVTOL infrastructure being published by the\nFAA for potentially 3-4 years. However,\nI do see a real possibility where there could be 2-3, if not more, fully\ncertified eVTOL aircraft in operation before that, all looking for places to\noperate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the FAA\u2019s heliport design advisory circular is not to be used as the starting point for eVTOL infrastructure, the question then becomes what guidance can we give states and municipalities today who are eager to embrace and attract this new mode of transportation in the future?\u00c2\u00a0 Alexander says that this is where he sees an opportunity for ASTM International, whose team of volunteers have been developing a consensus based vertiport standard for the last three and a half years.\u00c2\u00a0 \u201cThe ASTM vertiport standard, once published, could serve to bridge this temporary gap for the purposes of municipality master planning and policy development until the FAA has published their standard on vertiports,\u201d said Alexander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, helicopters and heliports are still very much alive and kicking.\u00c2\u00a0 Alexander highly encourages all state and municipality aviation professionals to do their due diligence and review the draft FAA heliport design advisory circular 2D and provide feedback to the FAA before the March 5th deadline. Here is the website: FAA<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The FAA recently released a new revision to the Helicopter Design Guide (150\/5390-2D – Draft AC 150\/5390-2D, Heliport Design). This draft provides standards for the planning, design and construction of heliports serving helicopters with single, tandem (front and rear) or dual (side by side) rotors. Rex Alexander, President of Five-Alpha and the infrastructure advisor to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17510,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509\/revisions\/17510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}