Electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, tend to attract attention because of the aircraft themselves. But making electric aviation commercially useful also requires places to land, charge, cool batteries, handle ground operations, and connect destinations into a functioning network.

That was the focus of a recent Net Zero Compare conversation with Lisa Wright, Founder and CEO of Landings, a company developing landing, charging, and ground infrastructure for electric aviation. Wright’s background spans architecture, commercial real estate, airport-related projects, energy management, and digital twins. She told Net Zero Compare that her interest in electric aviation developed as she considered what a large new fleet of electric aircraft would need on the ground. She concluded that aircraft production alone would not create regional mobility. A distributed network of suitable landing locations would also be required.

For sustainability and business decision-makers, that distinction matters. Electrifying transportation does not remove infrastructure constraints or environmental trade-offs. It changes them.

🎥 Watch the Full Conversation: In the full interview, Wright explains how Landings evaluates potential vertiport sites, why access to electricity may become a bigger constraint than finding land, and how charging infrastructure could potentially serve several forms of transportation rather than aviation alone. The discussion also covers the environmental case for electric aviation, regional and rural use cases, permitting, community concerns, and the gap between technically possible aircraft and networks that can operate reliably at scale. Watch the full conversation for additional context on how these issues connect and where Wright expects the market to develop over the next several years.

A Vertiport Does Not Need the Footprint of an Airport

One potential advantage of eVTOL infrastructure is its relatively small physical footprint. According to Wright, Landings generally works with commercial land and develops facilities at ground level rather than on top of buildings. She said its smallest planned vertiports require about 1.5 acres, including safety areas, compared with the much larger land requirements of regional airports.

Landings evaluates properties based on terrain, surrounding obstructions, flood exposure, flight paths, nearby airports, airspace conditions, and access to electricity. Wright said the company has built a platform that can analyze U.S. parcels against many of these criteria and is working to extend that capability to Canada. A property that looks attractive based on location alone may still be unsuitable because of topography, airspace, nearby obstacles, or insufficient grid capacity.

The smaller footprint also changes the real estate equation. Instead of requiring large airports or expensive downtown properties, some facilities could potentially use underutilized commercial land, portions of larger rural properties, or sites where aviation-related infrastructure already exists.

Energy Could Be a Bigger Constraint Than Land

Finding enough space for a vertiport may be relatively straightforward in some regions. Securing enough electrical capacity can be harder. Wright said Landings currently looks for the ability to obtain roughly one or two megawatts at a site. That level may already be available at some industrial properties or airports, but grid access can be more difficult in rural and remote areas. Landings is therefore considering combinations of grid connections, solar generation, and battery energy storage.

Battery storage could be particularly useful during early deployment because aircraft traffic is initially expected to be relatively low. Wright explained that a battery system could discharge power quickly when an aircraft needs charging and then recharge more gradually before the next aircraft arrives.

Higher-frequency operations would create a more demanding problem. Electric aircraft batteries can arrive hot after flight, and Wright said the aircraft do not necessarily carry the same type of onboard cooling capability used in other electric applications because additional equipment adds weight. Batteries may therefore need time to cool or require an external thermal management system before rapid charging. Grid availability, energy storage, thermal management, turnaround times, and aircraft utilization will all influence how much infrastructure a site actually needs.

Shared Charging Could Improve the Economics

One of the main commercial challenges facing emerging transportation infrastructure is timing. A network may need to exist before operators can use it at scale, but investing heavily before sufficient traffic exists creates financial risk.

Landings is exploring a multimodal model in which electrical infrastructure could serve aircraft as well as ground transportation. Wright said a location could potentially charge municipal vehicles, commercial fleets, or other EVs while aircraft traffic remains limited. An agreement with a municipality or commercial fleet operator could therefore create electricity demand before eVTOL use becomes substantial.

That could reduce the risk of building infrastructure that sits mostly unused while waiting for a new market to develop. It also changes the economics of the site. Infrastructure that serves several applications can be easier to justify than infrastructure dedicated to one low-frequency use.

Electric Aviation Still Requires a Full Sustainability Assessment

Electric aircraft eliminate direct fuel combustion during flight, but that alone does not determine their overall environmental impact. Wright pointed to several factors that need to be considered, including how the electricity is generated, the materials used to build vertiports, and what type of journey an electric flight replaces.

The comparison matters. Replacing a helicopter flight powered by conventional aviation fuel has a different impact from replacing an electric car journey. Replacing a three-hour car trip with a short regional flight creates another set of trade-offs, while a new journey that would otherwise not have happened creates a different comparison again.

Landings is also examining the construction footprint of its infrastructure. Wright said the company is looking at alternatives to extensive concrete use for landing areas and is using modular structures incorporating cross-laminated timber. The modular approach is intended to allow structures to be moved or expanded rather than treated as permanently fixed assets.

For sustainability teams, the relevant assessment therefore extends beyond operational emissions. Electricity source, construction materials, battery requirements, asset utilization, displaced transportation modes, and infrastructure lifespan all affect the overall environmental profile.

Noise Could Change Where Electric Aircraft Can Operate

Electrification may also affect aviation infrastructure through noise rather than emissions alone. Wright argued that quieter aircraft could make it possible to place landing locations closer to communities and businesses than would be practical with conventional helicopters.

Later in the conversation, she contrasted eVTOL noise with the high-pitched sound associated with smaller delivery drones. She cited approximately 65 decibels as a figure associated with many eVTOL aircraft and said Landings intends to conduct additional acoustic testing through a technical university partnership. Actual noise exposure will depend on aircraft type, altitude, flight frequency, operating procedures, and distance from the listener, making local testing and operational data important as networks move beyond demonstrations.

Rural and Regional Markets May Have the Strongest Early Use Cases

Much of the public discussion around eVTOLs has focused on passenger services in large cities. Landings is taking a different approach. Wright said the company sees medical transportation as one of the strongest initial use cases, including the movement of medicine, equipment, and eventually other time-sensitive medical materials between locations. Emergency response is another priority, particularly in communities where long ground travel times can delay access to care.

Logistics represents another potential market. Wright pointed to the development of larger drones capable of carrying substantially heavier payloads than the small delivery drones consumers are familiar with today. Passenger service sits further down Landings’ priority list. Wright expects passenger applications to develop, but she described medical services and logistics as earlier use cases for the company’s regional network.

That sequencing reflects where the clearest operational need may emerge first. Services built around time-sensitive medical transport, emergency response, or regional logistics can offer a more immediate use case than widespread passenger travel.

Low-Cost Land Changes the Infrastructure Equation

Landings is also trying to avoid one of the challenges associated with high-profile urban vertiports: expensive real estate. Wright said some of the company’s planned sites involve land that currently produces little or no revenue, such as unused portions of commercial properties, rural land, or excess parking areas. That creates a different economic model from a site in a major city center.

She described a range from small locations that may function more like stops within a wider network to larger sites with substantially more commercial activity. Not every location needs to operate as a major destination. Some may primarily provide network coverage and a dependable place to land within aircraft range.

In that model, an individual site does not have to be judged only on the revenue it generates directly. Its value can also come from making the wider network more usable.

Software Can Narrow the Site Search, but Local Partnerships Still Matter

Data can eliminate unsuitable locations quickly, but Landings does not treat site selection as a purely technical exercise. Wright described a planned project with a technical university where the terrain would not ordinarily have been Landings’ preferred choice. The relationship remained attractive because the university could support testing involving wind, fluid dynamics, structural performance, and acoustics.

Community support can also affect the attractiveness of a region. Wright pointed to central New York, where Landings is developing its first network, as an area with existing drone-related testing and communications infrastructure and communities willing to explore advanced air mobility.

For municipalities, property owners, and investors, this shows the difference between theoretical site suitability and practical viability. A site can be technically imperfect but still make sense if the local partnership, testing environment, permitting conditions, and community support are strong enough.

Community Questions Are Increasingly About Energy

Wright said many communities Landings speaks with are interested in the medical and emergency-response potential of electric aviation. The company often begins those discussions by looking at existing emergency services, medical transport arrangements, hospital networks, and helipads. In some cases, existing aviation infrastructure may provide a starting point for electrification rather than requiring an entirely new system.

She said electricity supply has become a more frequent community concern than noise and linked this partly to wider public discussion around the power requirements of data centers. Communities want to understand how much electricity new infrastructure will require and whether additional demand could affect local energy availability or costs.

Landings’ stated goal is not simply to draw power from the local grid. Wright said the company is exploring on-site generation and battery storage with the aim of improving resilience where practical. The concern is relevant beyond aviation as more sectors electrify and compete for grid capacity.

Commercial Deployment Will Happen in Stages

Electric aviation is unlikely to develop as a single market all at once. Wright expects passenger-carrying eVTOLs, heavy drones, and smaller aircraft used for specific operational purposes to progress on different timelines. During the interview, she said some heavy-drone and limited-use operations could become possible earlier than widespread commercial passenger service.

Landings’ central New York network is being designed with sites approximately 30 miles apart, making shorter-range applications possible before longer intercity passenger routes become commonplace. Wright also expects autonomy to become an important part of the industry, although public acceptance and regulatory development remain separate questions from whether aircraft are technically capable of autonomous operation.

For business planning, the main point is that technical capability, certification, infrastructure availability, fleet size, public acceptance, and commercial reliability will not necessarily advance at the same pace.

The Bigger Idea Is the Network, Not the Individual Vertiport

Wright’s main argument is that a single vertiport has limited value if there is nowhere useful to fly from it. Landings therefore focuses on regional networks rather than isolated flagship projects. Wright contrasted this with expensive showcase facilities that may make sense in major global cities but are difficult for smaller communities to replicate.

Her preferred model is lower-cost ground infrastructure distributed across more locations, allowing medical services, logistics, emergency response, agricultural applications, and eventually passenger transportation to share the same regional network. In practice, that means some sites can remain small and inexpensive while still contributing to the usefulness of the wider system.

Conclusion

The practical challenge for electric aviation is not limited to aircraft development. It also involves securing land, power, charging capacity, cooling systems, regulatory approval, and enough connected locations to make the network useful.

Landings is approaching that problem through lower-cost regional sites, shared infrastructure, and early use cases such as medical transport and logistics. Whether that model scales will depend on aircraft deployment, regulation, local acceptance, and access to sufficient energy infrastructure.

For companies, municipalities, and sustainability teams assessing the sector, the key question is not simply whether eVTOL aircraft can fly. It is whether the surrounding infrastructure can support them reliably, economically, and with a credible environmental case.