Five of the area's smaller airports will get some help preparing for what could be the next big thing in aviation. The OKI Regional Council of Governments is hiring a firm to study how to prepare the airports for advanced air mobility, or AAM.
“No, this is not about flying cars,” says Robyn Bancroft, strategic initiatives manager for OKI.
“It really relates to the new types of electric, and electric-hybrid aircraft that are being developed to transport goods and people.”
Bancroft says that includes drones and vertical takeoff and landing planes.
“This isn’t … this year you’re going to see them flying around,” she says. “But definitely over the next — I would say three, four, five, definitely next 10 years — you’ll be seeing more of these deployed.”
She says the consultant will work with the airports to create infrastructure that will accommodate AAM, like charging stations.
“The deliverable for the firm will be to look at each of the airports and what are their existing electrical infrastructure?” she says. “What’s there now? And then given the future in AAM and these aircraft, where’s the gap? What is needed?”
She says the airports — Cincinnati’s Lunken Field, Middletown’s Hook Field, Miami University’s airfield, Butler County Regional Airport and the Clermont County Airport — will all work with the consultants to meet their individual needs.
“They’ll come up with a conceptual plan of what electrical infrastructure is needed and missing, and then a cost estimate.”
She says who will pay for the upgrades is a bridge they'll cross when they get to it. She says there were federal funds available last year for upgrades, and that’s when the airports came to OKI. Numerous federal grant programs have been terminated or suspended in the first months of the Trump administration, leaving that source questionable.
Bancroft says public-private partnerships also are a possible source of funding.
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