To ensure successful Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) deployment, developers must address several key operational and infrastructural elements.

Physical Facilities & Standards

• Operator Readiness: Ensure the operator has met all requirements for readiness.
• FAA Compliance: Maintain site adherence to FAA engineering briefs and/or technical standards.
• Physical Infrastructure: Landing facilities, buildings, and structures like airports, heliports, and vertiports must be built or modified to accommodate AAM operations for both vertical and short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft.

Energy & Utility Integration

• Energy Planning: Energy infrastructure is needed to charge or fuel AAM aircraft and support facilities and equipment. Note: The Department of Energy's Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (JOET) is developing an electric load planning tool to help state and local agencies model and simulate the energy needs of any potential AAM site.
• Utility Interconnection: Early engagement with the local utility, including submitting interconnection requests as soon as possible, helps identify grid capacity constraints and upgrade needs before they become a source of delay.
• On-Site Electrical Infrastructure: Sites need adequate space and planning for substations, transformers, and charging equipment, with flexibility to expand as demand grows and charging standards evolve.
• Backup Power & Resilience: Facilities should plan for layered backup power (e.g., battery storage, generators) to keep critical operations running during grid outages.
• Parallel Permitting: Utility agreements and electrical permits should be pursued in parallel with other permitting processes, rather than sequentially, to avoid delays.
• General Utilities: Ensure the overall availability and adequacy of power and other required utilities.

Technology & Environment

• Radio Spectrum: Future aviation operations will require modernization of Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) technologies and systems, alongside innovative solutions in radio spectrum to ensure safe, secure, and resilient CNS functions. These must accommodate densely trafficked airspace and growing automated aircraft needs.
• Weather Monitoring: New sensor arrays and services must improve detection, reporting, and prediction of low‑altitude weather in environments that will impact AAM operations.

Land Use & Community Impact

• Policy Applicability: Determine the applicability of land use compatibility policies currently used for airports and heliports.
• Surrounding Land Use: Maintain site suitability by accounting for the different sensitivities of surrounding commercial, industrial, and residential land uses.
• Safety Zones: Create risk-based safety zones that may require restrictive area zoning.
• Approach & Departure Impacts: Manage approach and departure procedures to mitigate impacts to noise levels and visual pollution. Maintain adequate separation based on land use sensitivities.

Connectivity & Accessibility

• "First Mile-Last Mile": Support the "complete trip" concept, which looks at a traveler’s journey from beginning to end—including planning, payment, and all required modes to get from origin to destination. If any piece of a trip is inaccessible (physically, financially, temporally, etc.), the trip cannot be completed.
• Equitable Access: Ensure equitable access to effectively manage facility impacts across communities.
• Intermodal Connectivity: Provide intermodal and multi-modal connectivity to maximize the facility's value.

Current Industry Challenges

• Data Deficits: A lack of performance and operational data needed to inform vertiport policy, perform site reviews to identify impacts on airspace use, and determine achievable separation minimums for aircraft.
• Planning Frameworks: A lack of an existing framework to accommodate AAM into aviation infrastructure and energy infrastructure planning.
• Radio Frequencies: A lack of available radio communication frequencies to support air traffic operations, as well as strained capacity on existing, congested Automatic Dependent Surveillance‑Broadcast (ADS-B) frequencies, which will be impacted by AAM growth.
• Weather Networks: A need for improved precision weather detection and reporting networks.