Private–public partnerships key to integrating AAM into US National Airspace System
US Helicopter Safety Team industry cochair says robust private–public partnerships are key to integrating advanced air mobility aircraft into the IFR environment.
By Mark Huber
Speaking at VERTICON 2025 during a panel discussion covering AAM infrastructure interface and integration, Chris Baur, US Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) industry cochair, said, “[Flying] unintended into IMC [instrument meteorological conditions] is a huge killer of pilots. From a business perspective, I don’t know how you are operating a business like an airline if you could not fly IFR. It provides the highest level of safety, because you are not down among the obstacles and the terrain. So, looking at urban air mobility and how this could all come together, I think IFR is a big part of that safety.”
But how can this be accomplished in an environment where FAA resources are already stretched and change is sometimes slow in coming as a result? Baur points to the success that helicopter air ambulance providers have had with developing their own special ZK low-altitude IFR routes in cooperation with industry and the FAA. These routes rely on a variety of enabling performance-based navigation specifications and technologies, including RNAV (area navigation) and RNP (required navigation performance). Baur envisions a layered system “so depending on how the aircraft is [avionics] equipped, you can have that same level of accessibility.”
Under such a system, “everybody has a place at the table,” Baur said at the event, from operators of the largest airliners to those flying the smallest electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) operator.
“We don’t replace the FAA, we supplement them,” Baur said. And by connecting helicopter-only TK and ZK routes using RNP approaches and departures to already published routes, approaches, and departure procedures, you create “a successful ecosystem.”
Mark Huber is an aviation journalist with more than two decades of experience in the vertical flight industry.