Wisk breaks ground on on-airport vertiport for autonomous and piloted aircraft at Hollister Municipal Airport. August 27, 2026 Wisk Aero, an autonomous aviation company, today announced the groundbreaking of a new state-of-the-art vertiport at Hollister Municipal Airport in California. The facility is one of the first public airport vertiports designed to support both piloted and autonomous operations in the United States. Located alongside Wisk's existing flight test facilities in Hollister, the 100-foot by 100-foot vertiport serves as a dedicated testbed to evaluate terminal area flight procedures, collect real-world operational data, and prove out precision landing technologies. Data gathered from test flights at the site will feed directly into key regulatory and industry initiatives, including the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) and the ongoing refinement of the FAA Vertical Lift Infrastructure Advisory Circular. Designed to existing FAA vertiport standards, the new infrastructure features a modular, deployable layout constructed with steel elevated structures, integrated solar panels, power banks, and taxiway connectors. Its relocatable template allows the platform to be deployed across various operational environments, including future eIPP flight testing in Texas. "Breaking ground on this vertiport at Hollister Municipal Airport is a big moment for Wisk, AAM, and autonomous aviation," said Annie Cheng, Senior Program Manager, Operational Integration and Testing, at Wisk. "By testing autonomous and piloted operations on an actual public airport, we are bridging the gap between advanced aircraft development and real-world infrastructure. The data and operational learnings generated here will directly feed into our autonomy stack and help shape the FAA's foundational standards for future vertiport operations, moving autonomous air taxis significantly closer to commercial readiness." Engineered as a test and data-collection site that meets existing FAA vertiport standards, the vertiport enables Wisk to evaluate advanced landing technologies under nominal conditions, missed approaches, and GPS-denied environments. Wisk-developed transceivers installed directly on the pad will improve reduced and zero visibility operations across all VTOL aircraft - including traditional helicopters, other eVTOLs, and Wisk's 6th Generation air taxi - while initial surrogate flights and subsequent autonomy testing generate learnings to continuously refine Wisk's autonomy stack for future commercial service. The project was made possible through close collaboration among key local, state, and federal stakeholders.

Wisk builds Hollister vertiport to write FAA rules that don't exist yet. DroneXL may earn a commission when you buy through links on its site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Wisk's autonomous Generation 6 air taxi hovers over a vertiport landing pad, the type of test site now breaking ground at Hollister Municipal Airport. Photo credit: Wisk Wisk Aero broke ground on a 100-foot by 100-foot (30 by 30 meter) vertiport at Hollister Municipal Airport in California, the Boeing subsidiary said Wednesday, a test pad it will use to gather the landing data the FAA needs before it can publish a vertiport design standard. Video Muted The site sits alongside Wisk's existing flight test facilities in Hollister, where the company has operated since 2015. Wisk says the pad will evaluate precision landing technology under nominal conditions, missed approaches, and GPS-denied environments, and that the results feed the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program and the agency's pending Vertical Lift Infrastructure Advisory Circular. This is the second US airport landing pad for electric air taxis DroneXL has covered in six weeks. Orlando's aviation authority approved a vertistop at Orlando International on July 16. Both are being built to guidance the FAA still labels interim. Hollister's own filing calls the vertiport a temporary helicopter pad. The City of Hollister filed the project with California's state clearinghouse on July 23 as a temporary Final Approach and Takeoff area. The filing describes a relocation of Wisk's existing surrogate helicopter operations, and the state granted a categorical exemption because aircraft use at the airport does not expand. That document, posted as SCH 2026070939, moves the operations from a small area near the end of Runway 13 to a site south of the Runway 31 end. Hollister claimed two categorical exemptions under California environmental law: Class 1, covering existing facilities with negligible expansion of use, and Class 3, covering small structures. Wisk's announcement describes the same site as one of the first public airport vertiports in the United States designed for both piloted and autonomous operations. Hollister's city council cleared the arrangement last November. At the same meeting it approved a 2.8-acre expansion of Wisk's ground lease, adding $72,000 a year to the roughly $90,000 the company already pays the airport, according to BenitoLink's account of the November 17 staff report. The council went on to approve airfield access for Joby Aviation in December at $3,033 a year, contingent on FAA sign-off. The FAA has not had a vertiport Advisory Circular since 2010. Vertiport design in the United States still runs on interim guidance. The FAA cancelled its previous Vertiport Design Advisory Circular in 2010 for lack of compatible aircraft, and the replacement standard has not arrived. Engineering Brief 105 and its 105A update fill the gap. EB 105 was issued in September 2022, and the agency circulated a 105A update for comment in September 2024 that adjusted vertiport geometry and added a protection area for downwash and outwash. The 2010 cancellation and the promise of a future circular both sit in the FAA's own Federal Register notice from March 2022. Sixteen years without a design circular, and one of the test series that closes it runs through a private pad in San Benito County. There is a second limit buried in that notice. EB 105's standards apply only to vertiports used by a composite reference aircraft the FAA modeled, or by aircraft with similar performance, and anything outside that envelope is not covered. Closing that hole takes approach data from real airframes on real pads. Hollister's filing dates publication of the Advisory Circular to 2027 and says the FAA scheduled this round of testing to begin in 2026. The Orlando vertistop approved in July is designed to EB 105A as well, and Florida wrote vertiport permitting into state law in April, both built on top of guidance that was never meant to be permanent. Wisk puts transceivers on the pad for zero-visibility landings. Wisk says transceivers installed on the pad will improve reduced and zero visibility operations across all VTOL aircraft that use it, including traditional helicopters and other eVTOLs. The structure is modular: elevated steel sections, solar panels, power banks, and taxiway connectors. Annie Cheng, Wisk's senior program manager for operational integration and testing, said the project is "bridging the gap between advanced aircraft development and real-world infrastructure." The template is relocatable, and Wisk plans to deploy it across other operating environments, including future eIPP flight testing in Texas. The first aircraft to work the pad is not the air taxi. Wisk's announcement describes initial surrogate flights before autonomy testing, and Hollister's filing is explicit that what relocates to the new site is surrogate helicopter operations already running at the field. Wisk has two Generation 6 airframes in flight test since the second one flew on May 4, and the announcement does not say when either aircraft starts flying approaches to the pad. Wisk feeds Hollister data into a Texas eIPP project. The FAA selected eight eIPP projects in March, and no California agency leads one of them. Wisk takes part through the Texas Department of Transportation's proposal. The Hollister pad's relocatable design is built to travel to Texas for eIPP flight testing. That March announcement covered eight projects across 26 states, drawn from more than 30 proposals and created under the Unleashing American Drone Dominance executive order, per the FAA's selection notice. Wisk is named as a partner on TxDOT's project, which connects Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and eventually Houston. When DroneXL examined how the eIPP participants intend to operate, Wisk's plan was to fly conventional piloted aircraft on eVTOL routes in Texas and collect autonomy data from those flights before committing Gen 6 aircraft. The Hollister pad fits that sequence. The test hours accumulate in California, and the regulatory credit gets earned in Texas. San Benito County is not on the eIPP map at all. The Monterey Bay Economic Partnership holds $7.4 million to build eVTOL infrastructure across Hollister, Watsonville, Marina and Salinas, aimed at what would be California's first FAA-compliant multi-airport test corridor. DroneXL's take. The FAA has not written a vertiport design standard since it cancelled the last one in 2010, and the reason it gave was honest: there were no aircraft to write for. Wisk pouring a pad and handing the agency approach data is how that gets fixed. I want the circular published, and I would rather it rest on measured landings than on a modeled composite aircraft. The part I would watch is whose landings. EB 105 already narrows itself to a reference aircraft, and the eIPP is structured so that the companies with the most capital generate the most data. A standard assembled from a handful of company-owned pads tends to describe the aircraft that flew there. Drone operators have seen this movie: the drone Integration Pilot Program shaped Part 107, and the operators who were in the room shaped the IPP. The counterargument is real. Nobody else is volunteering to fund terminal-area testing for an aircraft category that carries no passengers yet, and Wisk says the pad-mounted transceivers will help traditional helicopters in low visibility, not only its own air taxi. That is a public good funded out of a private capital budget, and it beats another five years of nothing. What is left is the calendar. Hollister's filing dates the Advisory Circular to 2027, five years after an engineering brief the FAA called interim. If 2027 slips, the interim guidance becomes the standard by default, and every vertiport built in the meantime hardens around it. That date is the only hard number in this story the FAA controls. Sources: Wisk Aero, California State Clearinghouse SCH 2026070939, Federal Register (FR Doc. 2022-04351), Federal Aviation Administration, BenitoLink. DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Editor-in-Chief Haye Kesteloo is the Editor in Chief and Founder of DroneXL.co, where he covers all drone-related news, DJI rumors and writes drone reviews, and of EVXL.co, for all electric vehicle news. Haye can be reached at haye @ dronexl.co or @hayekesteloo.

Boeing is spinning off three of its startups - with a twist. August 14, 2026 Boeing is "selling" three subsidiaries focused on drone technology and logistics to competing startup Archer Aviation - in exchange for one-sixth of the parent company. Boeing is selling three of its small subsidiaries - Wisk Aero, Insitu, and SkyGrid - to California-based aircraft manufacturer Archer Aviation in an all-stock transaction that, pending regulatory approval, will close by the end of 2026. In return for the subsidiaries, Boeing will take roughly a 16.5 percent stake in Archer, while retaining access to key autonomy technology. The deal, which is worth an estimated $200 million in stock, isn't necessarily a clean exit for Boeing, but a re-alignment: the aerospace giant appears to be shedding its non-core businesses, while still preserving access to autonomy, electric aviation, and defense tech. What Archer Aviation is actually buying. Archer Aviation has sought to build an economically viable electronic vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, with the eventual goal of selling it as an "air taxi" for use in cities. The three former Boeing subsidiaries are therefore of considerable interest to its business approach: * Wisk Aero develops electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, with a heavy focus on autonomous flight. Wisk used to be a direct rival to Archer, before the companies settled litigation and began collaborating. * Insitu is a long-established unmanned aircraft company best known for systems like the ScanEagle. Insitu has sold drones to military customers in roughly 35 countries. * SkyGrid is an air traffic management and digital airspace company with a focus on integrating autonomous and advanced aircraft into increasingly crowded airspace. Taken in combination, the three companies would together give Archer capabilities across nearly the entire autonomy stack, including aircraft, flight-control software, autonomous missions systems, unmanned surveillance platforms, and airspace management. Archer has claimed that these new capabilities will strengthen the company's ZEE artificial intelligence platform. From a strategic perspective, this is all-important, because autonomous aircraft development is becoming less about a single drone and more about coordination between aircraft, sensors, and software. The acquisition could allow Archer to move from being a simple eVTOL manufacturer to becoming a broader autonomous aerospace company. Is Archer preparing to become a defense contractor? It is notable that while most of Archer Aviation's previous work has been with the commercial aviation sector, the new acquisitions would give it a prime position to work more closely with the military. Insitu has a sprawling array of defense customers, which could of course be important for Archer's military ambitions. ScanEagle and related systems are mature, expeditionary ISR drones with substantial real-world operational history. This would give Archer immediate access to defense customers, military certification experience, deployed unmanned systems, and existing production and support networks. And Archer has already partnered with Anduril on the hybrid-electric Thunder loyal-wingman concept of helicopters, so adding Insitu could serve to accelerate Archer's pivot into defense. The acquisition of Wisk is likely satisfying in that it gives Archer ownership of an autonomy technology it once competed (and litigated) against. Wisk spent years developing autonomous eVTOL systems, and the 2023 settlement between Archer, Wisk, and Boeing naturally positioned Wisk as Archer's autonomy partner for future aircraft. Boeing meanwhile will retain access to Wisk's core autonomous-flight tech for use in Boeing's own future commercial and military aircraft. That means Boeing gives up ownership of Wisk - but not access to the technological benefits. Boeing's move is consistent with CEO Kelly Ortberg's emphasis on divesting assets considered non-core; Boeing is attempting to rebuild its balance sheet and focus on major commercial and defense programs. The company has already sold other digital aviation assets. This new deal helps Boeing reduce management obligations while preserving capital and retaining upside through equity in Archer. And because technology access was preserved, Boeing can still benefit from the offset companies, without having to fund every development program. The question now is whether Archer can successfully integrate three new, and quite different, businesses. Harrison Kass is a writer and attorney focused on national security, technology, and political culture. His work has appeared in Tablet, City Journal, The Hill, The Spectator, and The Cipher Brief. He holds a JD from the University of Oregon and a master's in Global & Joint Program Studies from NYU. More at harrisonkass.com.