impactAIR: The Next Site-Selection Criterion Won’t be a Highway, But it Might be a Vertiport

ImpactAir: The Aviation Edge for Communities gives economic developers, airport executives/managers, elected officials, and industry stakeholders a source to explore. 

Meet George Jetson . . . 

Every economic development office has, by now, learned to talk fluently about broadband, workforce pipelines, and shovel-ready sites. Almost none of them can answer a question that's about to matter just as much: does your community have a place for an electric aircraft to land, charge, and take off again? 

That question sounds futuristic, but the future is coming more quickly than most people realize. And in some cases it’s already here. In 2024, the FAA published design standards for vertiports — the specialized facilities built to handle takeoff, landing, and charging for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The communities that treat those design standards as a starting gun rather than a curiosity will position themselves to capture the next wave of aviation-linked investment before their neighbors even know it's underway.

The regulatory starting gun already fired

FAA Engineering Brief 105A is the first updated federal design standard for vertiports since guidance from the tiltrotor era was withdrawn in 2010. EB 105A lays out safety zones, electrical infrastructure requirements, and siting specifications for the aircraft now moving through FAA certification. It's explicitly an interim framework, meant to bridge the gap until a full, performance-based Advisory Circular is ready. But it's real, it's federal, and it's usable today by any airport sponsor or local government that wants to reserve space in a master plan or capital improvement budget.

That last point is the one economic developers should sit with. The FAA is not promising that communities that plan early will automatically attract vertiport investment, but its guidance makes the advantage of early preparation clear. EB 105A encourages proponents to engage the appropriate FAA regional or district office early in the planning process, while new on-airport vertiport infrastructure must be incorporated into the Airport Layout Plan and submitted for FAA review before development and operation. That means communities that resolve land-use, infrastructure, airspace, utility, and regulatory questions before operators begin selecting sites will be better positioned to compete for the first wave of vertiport development. That is the practical advantage of being development-ready when the market arrives. 

This is not a niche or a novelty market

The scale here is easy to underestimate because eVTOL still sounds like a concept-car story. In fact, Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) — a broad emerging aviation ecosystem encompassing electric and other advanced-propulsion aircraft, increasingly sophisticated automation, and new passenger and cargo applications — has moved from concept development into aircraft production, flight testing, certification, infrastructure planning, and early deployment. The potential market is substantial: a Deloitte and Aerospace Industries Association analysis estimates that the U.S. AAM passenger and cargo mobility market alone could reach approximately $115 billion annually by 2035 and support more than 280,000 jobs. Manufacturers are investing well ahead of that projected demand, although commercial timelines have proven more difficult than early industry forecasts suggested. Leading eVTOL developers that once targeted commercial operations beginning around 2025 and 2026 are progressing through certification and production, with some U.S. commercial deployments now expected in late 2026 and beyond. 

Communities don't need to bet on which manufacturer wins that race. They need to recognize that the infrastructure question — where these aircraft land, charge, and are serviced — is being decided now, regardless of which airframe ultimately dominates.

What an early mover actually looks like

Southwest Ohio is the clearest example available today of a region treating AAM as workforce and economic development strategy rather than a future curiosity. Butler County Regional Airport, Middletown Regional Airport, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, Butler Tech, and regional industry partners have formed a collaborative effort specifically to align education and career-training pipelines with the needs of the advanced air mobility industry. That's a fundamentally different posture than waiting for a vertiport proposal to show up and then scrambling to staff it. It's building the workforce pipeline before the demand curve arrives — the same logic that made Salina, KS the standout case in general aviation infrastructure investment, applied one generation ahead.

Crawford County Airport in southeastern Illinois offers a smaller-scale but instructive version of the same instinct. Even before a 2023 tornado destroyed every building on the airfield, the county's airport layout plan already called for electric aircraft charging infrastructure — a bid to become the first airport in the state to offer it. When the rebuild came, that forward-looking vision meant the community reconstructed toward where aviation was heading, not just where it had been. The lesson generalizes well beyond Illinois: communities that bake next-generation aviation infrastructure into their planning documents before they need it are the ones who can move fast when a rebuild, grant cycle, or investment decision suddenly puts a deadline on the table.

Why economic developers specifically should care

Site selection is, at its core, a process of elimination. Companies and executives don't choose the best possible location out of every option nationwide — they screen out communities that can't answer basic infrastructure questions, then choose the best location from the remaining options. Airport capacity is already one of those screening questions for industrial recruitment and executive mobility. AAM readiness is poised to become a version of the same test, for a specific and growing category of investment:

• Aerospace and advanced manufacturing suppliers increasingly evaluate communities based on proximity to next-generation aviation infrastructure, not just legacy runway access.
• Corporate site selectors are starting to treat vertiport-adjacent zoning and utility capacity the way they already treat fiber and substation capacity — a due-diligence line item, not an afterthought.
• Workforce development offices that build AAM-relevant training pathways now, as Southwest Ohio has, position their regions to supply a labor pool that most competing communities haven't started building.

None of this requires a community to have a vertiport under construction today. It requires reserving the option — in a master plan, a zoning map, or a capital improvement plan — so the community isn't starting from zero when the first real proposal arrives.

The ask

The FAA has already told communities what happens next: those that plan under current guidance now will be considered for early vertiport investment later. That's a short list, and it's being written today, not in 2035 when the market projections come due. For economic developers, the immediate task isn't securing a vertiport — it's making sure AAM readiness is a line item in the next master plan conversation, not a subject nobody on the team has raised yet. The communities that show up prepared when the first serious AAM proposal arrives will be the ones who decided, years earlier, that this was worth planning for before it was obvious.
[Ron Kresha is an avid pilot and aviation strategist. He is a leading voice for airport strategy development and economic development. He frequently presents his research at aviation and economic development conferences. He is a founding member of Golden Shovel Agency.]