A pop-up urban port for delivery drones — and one day, potentially flying taxis — launched Monday in Britain, lifting a box of prosecco for a brief celebratory test flight hailed as groundbreaking.
Air-One, a so-called “vertiport” for drones and future electric vehicles taking off and landing vertically, was proclaimed as the first of its kind by proponents and heralding a new era of low-emission futuristic air transport.
Based in Coventry, a former car manufacturing powerhouse in central England, the site will be used for a month-long showcase of the burgeoning industry.
The inaugural flight symbolically lifted the six-bottle box of sparkling wine, weighing around 12 kilograms, from the launch pad.
The commercial drone used — Malloy Aeronautics’ T150, on loan from its day job doing logistics for the British military — is the largest ever to fly in such an urban environment, according to Ricky Sandhu, founder and executive chairman of Urban-Air Port, the British firm behind the vertiport venture.
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