A New Sky Road for K-UAM To Be Established in Downtown Seoul

A sky road dedicated to urban air transportation (UAM) will be newly established in downtown Seoul by 2025.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Minister Roh, Hyung-wook) announced that it has officially published the "Korean Urban Air Transport (K-UAM) Operation Concept 1.0," which contains strategies and scenarios for commercializing Urban Air Mobility (UAM) services in Korea.

The concept of operation (ConOps), which analyzes policies, business goals, and strategies in an organization (or a company), systematically contains step-by-step operation strategies for K-UAM commercialization, roles and responsibilities, and operational scenarios in normal and abnormal situations.

In particular, it is noteworthy that it presents a blueprint for the operation of a three-dimensional urban transportation system such as the UAM corridor, a sky path dedicated to urban air transportation.

This concept of operation was finalized after deliberation of "UAM Team Korea (Chairman, 2nd Vice Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, hereinafter "Team Korea")" held in September.

Team Korea is a public-private consultative body established in June last year and plays a leading role in the industrial ecosystem as a policy community for urban air transportation in Korea.

The main contents of the management concept released by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on the day are as follows.

① Operation Strategy for Each Stage

K-UAM commercial operation includes three stages of development strategies - the early stages (2025~2029), growth period (2030~2034), and maturity period (2035~).

The most noticeable difference in operation at each stage is whether the captain directly boards and controls the △ plane (early stage), or flies in remote control (growth period), or autonomous flight (mature), and safety managers may board the plane for the case of an emergency.

② Stakeholders

Unlike the traditional aviation industry, UAM uses Vertiport (UAM take-off and landing field) located in the city's transportation hub without a runway as a transfer center, terminal, or bus stop, and operates low-altitude airspace (300-600m) due to the development of eco-friendly low-noise technology such as electric motor and distributed propulsion.

In addition, instead of the operation of airport facilities and air traffic control services that the state has been in charge of, Vertiport operation and UAM traffic management will be newly introduced, which provide services based on crowded urban bases or low-altitude airspace.

The private sector will also be able to participate as a UAM traffic management service provider that provides flight safety information sharing, traffic flow management, flight plan approval, and departure management services, focusing on the UAM corridor with UAM operators.

③ UAM Exclusive Corridor

A dedicated skyway for UAM, the UAM corridor, will be opened. The corridor is made in the form of a passage with Vertiport as the starting and ending point.

Corridor will be operated at all times by connecting the starting and ending point verification ports one on one in the early stages of commercialization. It operates only a few independently managed fixed (fixed corridors) without overlapping, crossing, or connecting to other UAM corridors, but as the number of vertical ports and routes increases, a number of corridors will become complex network forms (fixed corridors).

In the maturity stage, it will evolve into a dynamic corridor network that changes from time to time as it is created and disappeared according to flight plans.

The UAM corridor is separated from the existing aircraft airspace and UAM traffic management services will control the corridor instead of the national air traffic control.

④ UAM Traffic Control

The UAM corridor is managed by a traffic manager and will be operated using commercial mobile communication used in mobile phones from the beginning

Initially, voice-based wireless communication (VHF/UHF) is also used for captains, traffic managers, or air traffic controllers, but is gradually replaced by advanced digital communication systems.

The UAM corridor is made at least 150 meters higher than the small drone, and the new UAM Traffic Management (UATM) will be used separately from the K-drone system.

⑤ Operation Scenario

It provides service scenarios in the early stages.

After analyzing various situations that will occur in the main process of users getting on and off the UAM from various angles, each stakeholder's role and interrelationship has been clearly organized, and a commercial operation model was devised to define what stakeholders should do and procedures, but the scenario was reviewed with safety first.

To this end, response plans for abnormal situations such as bad weather and device failure are included in the operation concept as well.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport expects that Team Korea's K-UAM operation concept 1.0 is a national UAM service blueprint, and discussions on commercialization preparations will begin in earnest inside and outside the industrial ecosystem, including stakeholders.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plans to enact and reflect various institutionalizations. The plan is to continue to develop and materialize this operating concept through public-private joint demonstration projects such as the K-UAM Grand Challenge and continuous R&D projects.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plans to directly demonstrate the operation scenario through a UAM flight demonstration in November. It is planned as the second event following the first flight demonstration (co-hosted with the Seoul Metropolitan Government) held in Yeouido, Seoul, on November 11 last year.

The event plans to introduce the Seoul Metropolitan Airport Shuttle Service (Gimpo, Incheon Airport ⇔ Downtown Seoul), which will be a commercialization route in 2025, to the public in advance to verify the UAM operation scenario suggested in the operation concept.

It will be held in Gimpo Airport (November 10, Provisional) and Incheon Airport (November 15, Provisional), and Team Korea organizations will participate in the demonstration by playing the role of stakeholders in the UAM ecosystem.

Hwang Sung-kyu, chairman of Team Korea (Second Vice Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport), said, "If our companies, academia, government, local governments, and public institutions work together, Korea could be the first country in the world to introduce and live next-generation high-tech mobility."

The "Korean Urban Air Transport (K-UAM) Operation Concept 1.0" will be published as a booklet, and anyone can download it by visiting the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's website (www.molit.go.kr).

Reported by Smart City Today