While electric aviation companies focus on urban air taxi applications, a parallel infrastructure opportunity is emerging in an unlikely location: rural America’s logistics and emergency response corridors.
Landings, a vertiport development company, is building a network of over 2,000 charging and landing stations specifically designed for secondary and rural markets. The thesis: property owners in non-urban locations have a first-mover advantage in capturing value from electric aviation infrastructure.
Following the Money to Rural Markets
The opportunity stems from immediate use cases rather than speculative passenger transport. Amazon’s $4 billion annual spend on rural last mile delivery represents one addressable market. Agricultural operations, emergency medical services, and infrastructure inspection create additional demand drivers that don’t exist at the same density in urban centers.
“Rural areas currently have demand for agricultural uses. They also lack infrastructure, like highways and trains, that cities have,” explains Lisa Wright, Landings’ founder and CEO. “Overall it just seems there are much more varied and better use cases in rural America.”
For commercial real estate portfolios, this creates an amenity play with revenue-sharing potential and minimal capital requirements.
The Portfolio Opportunity
Wright is actively seeking partnerships with retail chains, logistics companies, agricultural equipment suppliers, and utilities that operate multiple rural locations. These companies represent ideal partners: they’re already positioned in target markets and will need electric charging infrastructure for their own equipment fleets.
“The benefits to them is that the future of all equipment is actually electric and they’re going to need charging capabilities on their sites,” Wright notes. “They’ll become equipment share for electric aircraft or electric vehicles as well as selling, and they’ll be a showroom much like they are right now for all their other equipment.”
The model involves no land purchase or lease from property owners. Landings identifies suitable sites within portfolios, sources capital and equipment for vertiport construction, and operates under revenue-sharing agreements once facilities are active.
Site Selection Criteria
Wright evaluates potential vertiport locations based on three factors: permitting ease in receptive communities, proximity to viable use cases (industrial, agricultural, medical facilities, or population centers), and access to adequate electrical infrastructure.
Rural locations often satisfy all three requirements more readily than urban sites. Zoning tends to be more flexible, local governments welcome economic development, and existing agricultural or industrial operations frequently provide power infrastructure.
“If it’s a 10-year lead to get energy to a site, we’ll consider it as a backup site, but we’re really first and foremost looking for sites where power is readily available,” Wright explains.
The Competitive Timeline
The value capture window may be narrower than conventional real estate investors expect. Wright draws parallels to electric vehicle adoption, which scaled from 5,000 units to 250,000 units annually within five years.
“There’s some point in time in the future when eVTOLs are going to proliferate and it’s going to come incredibly fast,” she notes. “Being ready is key because if you’re not ready and the site two blocks down is, that’s where aircraft operators are going to go.”
The geographic density matters: Wright estimates that every area within 12 to 25 miles will eventually require one vertiport but won’t support two. This creates a land grab dynamic where first movers in each service area capture the asset value.
Near-Term Use Cases Drive Adoption
While passenger air taxi applications generate headlines, Wright expects cargo and heavy drone operations to drive initial infrastructure utilization. Agricultural spraying, emergency medical response, utility infrastructure inspection, and last mile delivery all present immediate applications without passenger certification requirements.
Emergency medical services represent a particularly compelling use case for rural communities. Aerial response vehicles can reach incident scenes before ground ambulances in areas with limited road infrastructure or challenging terrain.
“There are already small light craft that an emergency responder can be to the scene of an incident before an ambulance,” Wright explains. “That is of great interest to remote communities where they have maybe one ambulance, but the roads are winding, there’s a mountain in between, and the time to response is a lot longer.”
Connecting Rural to Urban Networks
Landings’ strategy involves building regional networks that will eventually connect to urban vertiport infrastructure as aircraft range increases.
“We’re building multiple smaller intra-networks. It’s too far from New York City to Boston currently. However, we’re going to build networks in between cities until aircraft can make hops, and then ultimately they’ll be able to do the full length,” Wright explains.
This approach positions rural infrastructure as complementary rather than competitive to urban vertiport development. As electric aircraft capabilities expand, the networks interconnect to enable longer-distance point-to-point travel.
Portfolio Analysis Approach
For REITs and multi-property owners evaluating the opportunity, Wright’s team analyzes entire portfolios to identify optimal locations rather than evaluating sites individually.
The value proposition varies by property type: office parks gain tenant amenities, logistics centers improve last mile capabilities, utilities enhance inspection efficiency, and retail locations add charging infrastructure that will serve their own future electric fleets.
Wright’s architecture and energy management background informs her approach to vertiport development. She’s studied the operational challenges of fixed-base operators and airports, focusing on minimizing customer friction and time delays.
“We really want to make point-to-point travel as seamless as getting an Uber,” she notes.
The Asset Class Question
As electric aviation infrastructure matures, vertiports may emerge as a distinct real estate asset class. The revenue model combines elements of parking infrastructure, electric vehicle charging networks, and transportation hubs.
For property owners, the near-term opportunity involves securing strategic positions in rural and secondary markets before aircraft proliferation creates competitive pressure for limited suitable sites.
Wright’s message to commercial real estate players: the infrastructure window is open now, rural markets present better near-term use case density than cities, and the value capture opportunity favors early movers who secure vertiport-ready sites before aviation reaches critical mass.
Lisa Wright is founder and CEO of Landings. Property owners interested in vertiport feasibility analysis can connect through landings.co
Disclosure: Individuals or companies mentioned may have a commercial relationship with KeyCrew.
