Wisk announces a new vertiport in California for autonomous aircraft. Wisk broke ground on a state-of-the-art vertiport at the Hollister Municipal Airport in California that boasts an innovative deployable design Published: 29 Aug 2026, 14:16 UTC - By: Photo: Wisk A brand-new vertiport is already under construction in California, and it's meant to become one of the first public vertiports purposely designed to support both autonomous and piloted aviation operations in the US. The name behind it? Wisk, maker of the first autonomous passenger aircraft that's a candidate for the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) certification. A new state-of-the-art vertiport is coming to the Hollister Municipal Airport in California. The location is directly connected to Wisk, which already operates its flight test facilities in Hollister. This new vertiport will be a step up in terms of flight testing, allowing Wisk to expand the development and testing of its autonomous flight technology. However, the new vertiport won't be limited to that. It's meant to support operations for other eVTOLs and even conventional helicopters, in addition to the Wisk 6th generation air taxi. Its primary role is that of a testbed for evaluating specific flight procedures and collecting real-world data. In terms of specifications, the vertiport will cover a 100 x 100-foot surface (30.4 x 30.4 meters), and will incorporate solar panels, power banks, and taxiway connectors. One of the most interesting features is that this vertiport is not only modular, but also deployable. It's meant to be literally relocated to various testing areas and environments. According to Wisk, these will also include specific future eIPP (the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program) flight test areas in Texas. In fact, real-world data collected from the test flights that will be completed at this new vertiport will contribute directly to the current regulatory and industry initiatives in the US, including the eIPP and the FAA Vertical Lift Infrastructure Advisory Circular. Another interesting feature of the future vertipad was developed by Wisk. They are transceivers installed straight on the pad specifically for improving operations in conditions of low or no visibility. The key fact here is that, even though the new vertiport is meant as a testbed, it's also an actual public airport. Therefore, it will directly act as a stepping stone for fully operational vertiports in the near future. The term vertiport is used to describe the specific infrastructure intended for eVTOL operations, which is different than conventional airports and adapted to the specific conditions of eVTOL operations (including aircraft recharging assets, for instance). Wisk, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing, is one of the few companies focused solely on autonomous aviation. Its technology has already reached the 6th generation aircraft, designed to operate at a cruising altitude of 2,500 feet (760 meters), at a cruising speed of 120 knots (222 kph), and with a range of up to 90 minutes (with reserves). This 6th generation aircraft boasts simplified design, meaning fewer moving parts, as well as redundancy built into every flight system, which means that every essential feature has a backup to ensure safety across all stages of the flight. Liked the article? Follow Autoevolution to see more articles from autoevolution in your Google feeds.

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.