Wisk Aero has broken ground on a new vertiport at Hollister Municipal Airport in California, adding a dedicated test site for autonomous and piloted electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. The company, which is being acquired by Archer Aviation from Boeing, says the facility will be one of the first vertiports built at a US public airport designed to support both crewed and uncrewed flight operations.
The 100 foot by 100 foot vertiport sits next to Wisk's existing flight test facilities in Hollister. It will serve as a testbed for evaluating terminal area flight procedures, collecting operational data and validating precision landing systems. Wisk says the data gathered at the site will feed directly into two federal efforts, the Federal Aviation Administration's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program and the ongoing development of the agency's Vertical Lift Infrastructure Advisory Circular.
The vertiport follows current FAA vertiport design standards and uses a modular layout built from elevated steel structures, integrated solar panels, power banks and taxiway connections. Its relocatable design allows the platform to be redeployed to other test sites, including planned flight testing in Texas under the same federal pilot program.
Wisk says the Hollister groundbreaking marks a step toward bridging aircraft development with the physical infrastructure regulators will require before autonomous air taxi service can operate commercially in the United States.
Source: AviTrader Aviation News - https://avitrader.com/2026/08/31/wisk-begins-construction-of-evtol-vertiport-at-hollister-airport/