Wisk启用Hollister垂直起降场，拟用于着陆技术测试

Wisk Aero cut the ribbon on its 100-foot by 100-foot (30 by 30 meter) vertiport at Hollister Municipal Airport in California on October 29, and the Boeing subsidiary said Friday the pad is fully operational. That is nine weeks after Wisk announced the start of construction, which DroneXL covered in August.

Wisk calls the site one of the first public, on-airport vertiports in the United States built for both piloted and autonomous operations, and says it was built to existing FAA vertiport standards. On October 22, a week before the ceremony, the FAA posted the draft standard that would replace them.

Wisk’s second Generation 6 aircraft, registered N607WA, sat on the pad during the event. Neither Wisk’s announcement nor its LinkedIn post about the opening says a Gen 6 has flown to it yet.

Wisk Readies Its Pad for Zero-Visibility Landings, Helicopters First

Wisk says the site is prepared to host surrogate helicopters and its Generation 6 aircraft for terminal-area maneuvers, missed approaches and precision touchdowns in GPS-denied conditions, using proprietary transceivers built into the pad that support navigation testing in reduced and zero visibility for any VTOL aircraft.

Hollister’s July filing with the state, which we covered in August, describes the first traffic as Wisk’s existing surrogate helicopter operations moving to the new site. N607WA has been in flight test since its first flight on May 4.

CEO Sebastien Vigneron, who ran Gen 6 product development before taking the top job in May 2025, said the pad gives Wisk “the exact physical setup needed to validate precision landing technologies.” Wisk’s announcement says the data feeds the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP). Wisk takes part through the Texas Department of Transportation’s project, one of the eight the FAA selected in March.

Wisk's second Generation 6 aircraft, N607WA, on the Hollister vertiport during the opening. Photo credit: Wisk

Caltrans and Two FAA Offices Helped Build a Central Coast Corridor Anchor

The vertiport anchors the California Advanced Air Mobility Corridors Initiative, the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership’s plan for one FAA-compliant flight corridor linking Central Coast public airports. Wisk credits Caltrans, the City of Hollister, the FAA’s local Airports District Office and the FAA Office of Airports for the fast build.

In its LinkedIn post, Wisk also thanked Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), whose 18th District takes in all of San Benito County. Jeff Crechriou, the airport’s executive director, said “eVTOL becomes a reality through strong community support.”

The FAA’s Draft Would Cancel the Interim Brief Wisk Built To

Today’s FAA vertiport guidance is Engineering Brief 105A, an interim document. Draft advisory circular AC 150/5390-4, posted October 22, cancels it once final. Comments close January 11, 2027, and the FAA expects final standards in summer 2027, less than a year after Hollister opened.

The draft circular drops EB 105A’s aircraft limits, sizes the touchdown area at the aircraft’s rotor diameter plus 10 feet (3 meters), and sets a powered-lift approach surface of 15:1 or shallower. Wisk built Hollister from elevated steel sections, solar panels, power banks and taxiway connectors, and says the deployable design can be adapted for future test sites. In August, Wisk said the pad’s results would feed the pending circular itself, and the FAA says eIPP data will help refine the standard before it is final.

DroneXL’s Take

Building a deployable pad while the standard is still a draft is the right call, and testing on it now beats waiting for the final circular in summer 2027. The FAA based the draft on its own research into how vertical-flight aircraft perform, and Hollister can test that research in the open, because it sits on a public airport and its transceivers work for any VTOL aircraft, not only Wisk’s. I’d like to see Wisk send what the pad has measured so far to the FAA before the January 11 comment deadline, and publish it so other pad builders can read it too. And I’d like Wisk to say publicly when a Gen 6 flies its first approach to the pad it cut the ribbon on this week.

Sources: Wisk Aero, Wisk on LinkedIn, Federal Aviation Administration (draft AC 150/5390-4).

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.