Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue hope to land the next generation of air transport companies at a testing facility in Central Florida.
Perdue for years has championed advanced air mobility, which would involve establishing “vertiports” in urban areas that could serve as hubs for short aerial commutes by battery-powered aircraft that have characteristics of airplanes and helicopters.
DeSantis recently saying he was “mildly excited” about the effort to reduce congestion along the I-4 corridor, Florida will first try to attract the growing technology to Polk County.
While few details were released, DeSantis and Perdue on Thursday announced plans for an aerial test bed at the department’s SunTrax facility in Polk County.
The test facility will include two vertiports, which are take-off and landing sites for primarily electric vertical take-off and landing, “VTOL,” aircraft.
“The idea would be, if they could do this to scale, if they can make it economical, it would take some traffic off the roads, because people, they could cycle through with travelers on doing that. So we’re just trying to have as many options as possible,” DeSantis said during an announcement that was focused on new express lanes on I-4 in Hillsborough County and a truck parking facility along I-4 in Polk County.
Once green-lit from the federal government, the VTOLs would be expected to provide short air transport “like an Uber” and potentially draw investments from deep-pocketed “Wall Street guys,” according to the governor.
“It’s not going to go from Miami to Jacksonville or Miami to Pensacola,” DeSantis said “It’s really within that 60 miles. And in areas where there is traffic, where you want to get from maybe one urban center to the next, it makes a lot of sense.”
The test facility will help the private sector quickly advance into the “age of flying cars” in Florida, Perdue added.
Perdue and DeSantis saw prototypes of the VTOLs in June at the Paris Air Show, an international aerospace trade fair and air show. Perdue said that some of the prototypes are expected to get federal approval in 2026 for supervised trials.
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This article appears in Oct. 16 – 22, 2025.