60 REAL-LEADERS.COM / SUMMER 2022 BUSINESS & INNOVATION 01 POP-UP AIRPORTS TO REDUCE CITY CONGESTION The United Kingdom is opening the world’s first pop-up airport for flying cars, including electric air taxis and drones, heralding an age of zero-emission urban aircraft. It will be built in Coventry, 80 miles north of London, with the company behind it, Urban Air Ports, planning to develop 200 more sites in the next five years. “Cars need roads. Trains need rails. Planes need airports. Electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles will need urban air ports,” says Ricky Sandhu (pictured above, left), founder of Urban Air Port. The airports will all be zero-emission and 60% the size of a standard heliport. They’ll be the smallest airports in the world, too, constructed and dismantled in just days. Hyundai has come on board as a partner as part of its plan to commercialize air taxis by 2028. Zero-emission urban aircraft could take off in the next few decades, according to KPMG, especially over the world’s most congested cities. The urban air mobility market could be worth up to $500 billion in the United States alone, according to NASA. Researchers estimate they could account for 4% of all domestic flights by 2050. How else could you reduce congestion and pollution in cities? And what support industries to urban air mobility might be open for innovation? 3 WAYS TO TURN THE FAMILIAR INTO SOMETHING NEW “The only thing constant is change,” we’ve been told for almost a decade. These three familiar features of contemporary life are about to shift again… Are you ready to take advantage when they do?
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