Amazon CEO And Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos Speaks At the Air Force Association Air, Space And Cyber Conference.Getty Images
Amazon has come in for a roasting over clauses in its agreements with New York and Virginia authorities promising the e-commerce giant private helipads at the two huge office complexes it’s planning to build. The New York tabloid takeaway: politicians are treating billionaire Jeff Bezos to a quick and easy air commute courtesy of taxpayer subsidies while we rattle around on a decrepit subway system.
There’s likely more to it. Amazon may be looking further down the road to the maturation of a wave of electric and hybrid aircraft under development that could enable cheaper, quieter air travel within and between cities for more employees than just its founder and top executives. And the location of its planned campuses — by the East River in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, and close to the Potomac in Northern Virginia — will give it access to waterways that currently serve as flight corridors, so the company doesn’t have to wait for the uncertain prospect of regulatory approval for the more widespread, over rooftop flying that Uber Elevate’s vision of the future will require.
“Jeff Bezos has his own spacecraft company — of course he’s thinking about the future of aerospace and transportation,” says Peter Schmidt, a former private jet charter executive who’s cofounder of Transcend Air, a company that’s developing a six-passenger tilt-wing aircraft for inter-city transportation.
Given the worsening road congestion in the New York City and Washington, D.C., areas, says Schmidt, not to mention their aging mass transit systems, “a helipad is a useful tool even with just current helicopters. But it will only become more valuable as VTOL options mature.”
In Long Island City and Northern Virginia, Amazon is planning to build what are effectively cities within cities — campuses that it says will grow to house at least 25,000 workers, and eventually as many as 40,000 in LIC. Developers of large urban projects like Amazon’s and Hudson Yards on the West Side of Manhattan have to think about designing them to fit into the transportation networks of the future, because it may be impossible to add the infrastructure later, says Rob Wiesenthal, CEO of Blade, an app-based helicopter and plane charter service that’s attempting to develop that infrastructure.
“You can’t retrofit a skyport, that has to be built into your plans now,” he says.
The design issues are myriad. There needs to be a clear flightpath in and out; room for waiting areas, baggage and clearing passengers through security; capacity for dedicated elevator runs for rooftop areas; and the ability to accommodate the higher voltage cabling and electrical equipment that will be needed for rapid charging,
Wiesenthal, whose company is advising the real estate giants Vornado and the Related Companies, says that a number of projects currently in the planning stages are being designed with future air transportation in mind, including Vornado’s redevelopment of its properties across from Manhattan’s Penn Station. “There are buildings that basically have hidden skyports,” says Wiesenthal, who raised $38 million in Series B funding in March from investors including Airbus and Colony Northstar. They have areas that are being used for other purposes now, he says, but are designed so that they can easily be renovated to whatever standards the regulations governing urban air transport will require when they’re finally written.
Forget about the future — a private heliport is an incredible plum in the New York City of today, where rooftop helipads have been banned since 1977, when a commuter helicopter flipped over on top of the Pan-Am Building, killing five. There are currently only three heliports in Manhattan, all of which are shared. The only New York City company with its own heliport is Goldman Sachs, across the Hudson in Jersey City at the foot of its riverside tower, but it’s ceased using it.
From Long Island City, Bezos and top executives will be able to reach John F. Kennedy Airport by helicopter in 4 minutes, LaGuardia in 4 or 5, or hop across to Newark Liberty or to to catch a private jet at Teterboro in 8 minutes.
In the future, more employees could benefit, as electric and hybrid VTOL aircraft emerge that have lower operating costs than the current generation of fuel-burning helicopters. And it’s highly likely Jeff Bezos is planning on it.
Says Wiesenthal, “He’s definitely thinking, I’ve got 25,000 people and I have to look at the way the city is going to be run in 20 years.”