Why Rural America, Not Cities, Will Define the Future of Electric Aviation Infrastructure

Written by:

Steve Marcinuk

Date:

09 Dec 2025

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The race to launch urban air mobility has dominated headlines, but the real infrastructure opportunity for electric aviation may lie where 80% of Americans actually live: outside major metropolitan centers.

Lisa Wright, founder and CEO of Landings, is building a network of over 2,000 vertiport and charging stations specifically designed for rural and secondary markets. Her thesis challenges the conventional wisdom that electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) will primarily serve urban corridors.

The Infrastructure Gap No One’s Addressing

“There’s a lot of attention currently on the urban markets because they seem like the high frequency use cases, such as getting from the city to the airport,” Wright explains. “I was trying to understand what use cases might be better or sooner in the market, and rural areas currently have demand for agricultural uses. They also lack infrastructure, like highways and trains, that cities have.”

The distinction matters for property owners and real estate investors. While major players focus on building vertiports in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Miami, Wright is securing sites in the communities that will actually need aerial connectivity first.

The Use Case Advantage

Rural markets present more varied and immediate applications for electric aviation than urban centers. Agricultural operations already deploy drone technology for crop monitoring and precision farming. Emergency medical services in remote areas face response time challenges that aerial vehicles could solve immediately.

“There are already small light craft that an emergency responder can be to the scene of an incident before an ambulance or any other sort of vehicle,” Wright notes. “That is of great interest to a lot of these remote communities where they have maybe one ambulance, but the roads are winding, there’s a mountain in between, and the time to response is a lot longer.”

Last mile logistics represents another significant opportunity. Amazon alone is spending $4 billion this year on rural last mile delivery. Landings’ infrastructure could provide landing and charging capabilities from distribution centers to final destinations, enabling local companies to participate in the logistics economy.

The Real Estate Play

Wright’s background in architecture and energy management shapes her approach to vertiport development differently than pure aviation players. She’s not competing with urban infrastructure developers but rather building the network that will eventually connect to city vertiports.

“We’re building multiple smaller intra-networks,” Wright explains. “It’s too far from New York City to Boston currently. However, we’re going to build networks in between cities until aircraft can make hops, and then ultimately they’ll be able to do the full length.”

For commercial property owners, this creates a first-mover opportunity. Wright is actively seeking partnerships with equipment retailers (both rental and sales), which operate hundreds of rural locations that could host vertiport infrastructure. 

“The future of all equipment is actually electric and they’re going to need charging capabilities on their sites,” Wright explains. “They’ll become equipment share for electric aircraft or electric vehicles as well as selling, and they’ll be a showroom much like they are right now for all their other equipment.”

Three Non-Negotiables for Vertiport Sites

Wright evaluates potential locations based on specific criteria: ease of permitting in communities open to the technology, proximity to viable use cases (industrial, agricultural, medical, or town centers), and access to adequate electrical infrastructure.

“If it’s a 10-year lead to get energy to a site, we’ll consider it as a backup site, but we’re really first and foremost looking for sites where power is readily available,” she notes.

Rural communities offer advantages in all three areas. Much of their land is already zoned appropriately, local governments tend to be more receptive to economic development opportunities, and many sites have existing electrical infrastructure from agricultural or industrial operations. Because vertiports do not require the enormous electrical loads that data centers do, many of these agricultural and industrial sites already have sufficient capacity to support initial vertiport operations without major upgrades.

The Timing Question

Property owners and REITs face a critical timing decision: secure vertiport-ready sites now or wait until the market matures.

“There’s some point in time in the future when eVTOLs are going to proliferate and it’s going to come incredibly fast,” Wright explains. “Being ready is key because if you’re not ready and the site two blocks down is, that’s where aircraft operators are going to go. Every area within 12 to 25 miles will require one vertiport, but they won’t require two.”

The comparison to electric vehicle infrastructure is instructive. In five years, EV manufacturing went from 5,000 units to 250,000 units annually. Wright expects similar acceleration for electric aircraft.

“While right now it may seem far off, it’s probably not more than a year or two before these things are in your neighborhood,” she says. “They’re going to need a place to land, they’re going to need a place to charge, and that place needs to be vetted and properly built.”

The Revenue Model

Landings isn’t purchasing or leasing land. Instead, Wright’s team identifies suitable sites, sources capital and equipment to build vertiports, and then operates them under revenue-sharing agreements with landowners.

“They don’t have to put money up front, they have the land, but in a couple of years time they will be part of the revenue share,” Wright explains.

For property portfolios, REITs, and commercial landlords, this creates an amenity opportunity with minimal upfront investment. Vertiports enhance property value, improve tenant offerings, and generate ongoing revenue once operations begin.

Beyond Passenger Transport

While air taxi applications attract media attention, Wright sees heavy drone operations and cargo transport as near-term drivers. Agricultural spraying, emergency response, infrastructure inspection for utilities, and last mile delivery all present immediate use cases that don’t require passenger certification or public acceptance hurdles.

A Distinct Market Category

Wright is working to establish “rural air mobility” as a distinct category from urban air mobility. The distinction isn’t about population density but use case density.

“All of the news coming out is always on urban air mobility, and understandably so. People are looking at it as a population issue,” Wright explains. “We’re looking at rural air mobility as more about a use case issue. The density of use cases is in rural areas.”

For real estate investors and property owners evaluating the electric aviation opportunity, Wright’s message is clear: the infrastructure opportunity exists outside major cities, the timeline is compressed, and the first movers will capture the value.

Lisa Wright is founder and CEO of Landings, developing North America’s largest network of vertiport infrastructure for rural and secondary markets. Learn more at landings.co