Publications
Intelligence for Advanced Air Mobility.
Findings, market readiness, and infrastructure analysis — covering operational readiness, regulatory movement, facility viability, and where the record can be trusted.
Featured Research · Aug 10, 2026
We Corrected the Federal Heliport Record. Six Times, Carefully.
In June we showed that the registry gap has a paper trail: hundreds of hospital helipads with federal airspace paperwork on file and no registration. This piece is what happened when we turned the same archive on the pads the registry does know about. Matching 483,006 FAA airspace case files against the facility registry produced 746 facilities where the case and the registry describe the same landing area but disagree about where it is. We adjudicated them. Six were registry errors, every one a hospital helipad whose federal coordinate sits 3,700 to 7,800 feet from the hospital it serves while the FAA's own case file places the pad within a few hundred feet. We corrected all six, and we preserved the FAA's original coordinate beside each correction, so the record of the error survives the fix. Then the honest half: when we took the strongest of the remaining conflicts into satellite adjudication, the registry won 13 of 14. The federal record is better than the noise suggests, and its errors are real, specific, and now on a watch list that will notice if the FAA ever fixes them.
Read the analysis →The Scoreboard · Live track record
Every forward call we publish, scored.
8 published forward calls, each tracked to resolution against primary-source events — 2 validated so far.
Research
In-depth analysis and findings on the AAM record
Research·Sep 9, 2026
When Infrastructure Becomes Risk
A field guide to physical readiness, dependency chains, and portfolio exposure in emerging markets.
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Research·Jun 28, 2026
Emergency Landing for eVTOL: The Infrastructure That Doesn't Exist
The emergency is a when, not an if. When it comes, an eVTOL needs somewhere to land, and the infrastructure for that mostly does not exist. We modeled it two ways on a real flight, JFK to Manhattan. First, reach: in a total power loss at 1500 feet, a helicopter can glide to a safe landing site over roughly 9 percent of the route, an eVTOL with wings over roughly 5 percent, and a multirotor over close to none. Then, usability: of 5,594 measured U.S. helipads, only about 30 percent are large enough to take a typical eVTOL as they exist today, and that is before the load bearing and obstruction gates that usually bind. Reach times usability means the usable emergency landing coverage for an eVTOL on a real corridor barely exists. This is not a glide circle problem. It is a whole system gap, and it is measurable now, before routes are declared operable.
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Research·Jun 14, 2026
The Registry Gap Has a Paper Trail
Earlier this month we reported that more than 1,100 hospital helipads operate in the United States with no FAA registration. The finding came from cross referencing two public datasets, and it left one question open: does the FAA simply not know these pads exist? We can now answer that for a quarter of them. We ingested the FAA's full archive of airspace case files, 483,006 cases reaching back decades, and matched every landing area case against the facility registry. For 284 of those unregistered hospital helipads, the FAA has its own paperwork on file: an aeronautical study, conducted and determined, at that exact location. The registry gap is not an awareness problem. It is a reconciliation problem inside the federal record itself.
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Research·Jun 6, 2026
Permission Isn't Readiness: The v2.0 Market Readiness Score
AirIndex has moved its 25-market readiness score to a new methodology, v2.0. Where v1.3 weighted regulatory permission at roughly 45% of the score and treated infrastructure and operators as present/absent flags, v2.0 rebalances around four co-equal pillars — regulatory authority, demand, landing capacity, and operator commitment — plus two modulators, momentum and operability. It now scores whether a market is permitted, demanded, landable, and being committed to, all at once. The result is more conservative and, we believe, more honest: no U.S. metro currently clears the ADVANCED tier, and Los Angeles leads. The full methodology is published, and every score change is explained on the market itself.
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One Market Monday
One-market readiness briefings · Mondays
OMM Report·Sep 13, 2026
Texas Flew Its First Program Flights From Fort Worth This Week. Dallas Moved Three Points Overnight.
Dallas–Fort Worth Metro
DallasView Report →
OMM Report·Aug 30, 2026
Houston Is the Fifth Market in the Index. Its Launch Operator Was Sold This Month.
Greater Houston Metro
HoustonView Report →
OMM Report·Aug 23, 2026
Salt Lake City Crossed Into MODERATE Twelve Days Ago. We Haven't Published It.
Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo
Salt Lake CityView Report →
Pulse
Weekly industry signal report · Fridays
Pulse Report·Sep 24, 2026
Pulse #25 — Westbound: the Texas aircraft landed in San Diego
Beta's N401NZ, the aircraft that formed the Texas corridors, flew fourteen legs from New Mexico to Miramar and produced the first observed eVTOL flights in the San Diego market, where the inference layer opened ten facility situations in two days; a second Beta aircraft flew a repeating Raleigh, Greenville, and Outer Banks pattern the ledger recorded from September 14 and Beta announced on September 23; Joby's first Texas corridor, Alliance to DFW, was minted September 14; Dallas published 64 to 71, 22 markets were restated under scoring v2.1, v2.2 changed no number, and a positive watch on three California markets traced to a drone statute is disclosed and slated for reset.
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Pulse Report·Sep 10, 2026
Pulse #24 — From flight activity to corridor evidence
Beta's CX300 flew Brenham, Sugar Land, and Galveston on three consecutive days, eleven legs, and the ledger converted repeated observed legs into the first corridor records associated with a pilot program operating pattern; the same aircraft then flew College Station, Waco, and Alliance in the Dallas area, where Joby has flown five local sorties, and the inference layer opened four hospital-pad situations around Alliance the day it arrived; a second Beta aircraft back from 275 flights in Europe flew 21 legs across the Mid-Atlantic including Patuxent River Naval Air Station; Archer's tour produced its first observed leg at Hollister; all 25 market scores held.
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Pulse Report·Sep 3, 2026
Pulse #23 — The flights caught up to the pilot program
Issue 22 reported Beta's announced Sugar Land to Galveston route as unobserved; on September 2 the same CX300 flew Brenham to Sugar Land to Galveston and back, four legs and all three Texas eIPP sites in one afternoon, and the platform revised its prior reading; the same day a Joby aircraft logged its first Texas track at Alliance in the Dallas area, the FAA confirmed the first remotely piloted eIPP test at Houma, and Archer announced a multistate tour; the inference layer opened eight hospital-pad situations around Sugar Land on its own; all 25 market scores held.
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Monthly Reports
System-level AAM infrastructure intelligence
Monthly Report
May 2026 Monthly Brief
After April's federal cluster, May returned to state-level signals. Four markets moved on legislation and regulatory posture; federal follow-on did not materialize.
May 30, 2026View Report →
Monthly Report
April 2026 Monthly Brief
Score movements, methodology adjustments, and structural reads across all 25 markets for April.
Apr 29, 2026View Report →
Monthly Report
March 2026 Monthly Brief
Inaugural monthly brief — methodology v1.3 launch, San Francisco's +35 surge, Joby–Blade consolidation.
Mar 30, 2026View Report →
Methodology & Reference
How the scores are built
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