One of Florida’s busiest general aviation airports is dedicating a chunk of airspace to study the operation of eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) air taxis, autonomous drones, and other novel aviation technologies.
Miami Executive Airport (KTMB) has one of the nation’s first agreements to host demonstrations of these aircraft. It will begin testing the integration of small drones within a cordoned off section of the airport, away from active runways. Ultimately, large eVTOL aircraft will join the effort.
“The technology is here,” Darrell Bell, CEO of Bell-Dancy Industries (BDI), told FLYING. “It’s just the testing, the certification, and then the safety aspects that we want to really establish and solidify.”
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Electric air taxis are likely still a few years from commercial adoption. But other advanced air mobility (AAM) services such as drone delivery are taking off nationwide, including in parts of Tampa. Leading eVTOL developers, such as Archer Aviation, Boeing’s Wisk Aero, and the U.K.’s Vertical Aerospace, view Florida as a key launch market.
The Miami-Dade Aviation Department (MDAD) enlisted BDI to help make sense of it all. The company will install its Autonomous Takeoff and Landing Assistant (ALTA) across Miami Executive’s ramp facilities to help the airport collect data on the new entrants.
- READ MORE: Miami-Dade Airports to Trial Air Taxi Management System
- READ MORE: Archer Unveils Miami Electric Air Taxi Network
“The landing and taking off at very close range of multiple vehicles, high-density operations—those are important aspects to consider when you talk about introducing a new vehicle into the national airspace,” Bell said.
The data could inform the design of future vertiports—electrified takeoff and landing hubs—at KTMB and neighboring airports. Beyond Miami Executive, MDAD manages Miami International (KMIA), Opa-Locka Executive (KOPF), Dade-Collier Training and Transition (KTNT), and Miami Homestead General Aviation (X51) airports. Its pilot program with BDI, called “SafeLand,” covers them all.
BDI aims to install ALTA nationwide to create a standardized AAM traffic management system. But Bell views Miami, in particular, as a “gateway city” to Southern Florida, with its potential to link travelers to surrounding airports, event venues, and other sites not served by traditional aircraft.
Officials are considering expanding Miami Executive to create a second commercial airport in the city, which would further bolster that case.
“For innovation, the first adopters are the ones that are going to be rewarded the most,” Bell said.
Mobility in Miami
Bell said the SafeLand pilot program will be carried out in phases. A ground-based system will provide trajectories for pilots’ situational awareness. The aircraft will fly at least 250 meters away from active runways, and BDI and MDAD will coordinate any eVTOL operations with the FAA.
“It’s still going to be in the operational airspace with live tower data, but it won’t be flying over any parked vehicles,” Bell said.
At the heart of the project is ALTA. The autonomous hardware and software system not only detects and tracks AAM aircraft but informs other vehicles of their position and expected trajectory, calculated “based on many different levels of data and inputs that are being ingested.”
BDI produces two variants of the system that share a common software suite. One—already tested by NASA and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)—has high fidelity but low range, ideal for tracking drones. The other has a longer range to track larger aircraft.
“We need to collect a lot of data within a very short amount of time, and that’s what our system is doing,” Bell said.
The BDI CEO said ALTA creates “essentially another layer of safety” on top of existing systems. It is designed to improve airspace visibility regardless of complexity or class, just about anywhere.
That includes “an airport, a parking garage, a stadium, a parking lot—wherever air taxis or eVTOLs can go,” Bell said. Vertiports at these locations would be able to “speak to each other” and operate using shared standards.
“That allows everyone that is within that tactical area or local area to be able to have a common site picture,” Bell said. “So you’re getting detection and tracking…You’re getting infrastructure where a municipality can see the same thing that an operator can see.”
The system also provides surface awareness, such as by measuring downwash and outwash around a vertiport. That would help ground personnel analyze the environment to reduce the powerful columns of air produced by eVTOL rotors. The data could also be used to optimize vertiport throughput, since it tells operators how many aircraft could safely take off and land in a given period.
Miami Executive will be one of the first airports to trial ALTA, but it may not be the last. Per Bell, the goal is to evaluate it there first before installing the system at Miami International and other airports in Miami-Dade and Broward counties,
helping determine which might be suitable for vertiports.
Vertiport developers Skyports, UrbanV, and Vertiports by Atlantic, as well as FBO Signature Aviation, are all exploring projects at Miami Executive or other Florida airports, per plans they have shared and routes proposed by Archer and Vertical. Wisk has its own partnership with MDAD to study potential vertiports at KTMB, KMIA, and KOPF.
BDI in December agreed on a similar pilot with San José Mineta International Airport (KSJC) in California. Bell hopes for ALTA to support planned air taxi demonstrations at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
“Those efforts that are happening in those different locations, they are all pointing toward the same goal—to increase the standard level of safety, regardless of where these aircraft fly,” he said.
Future of Florida
Bell said BDI has “seen the writing on the wall for the direction of the industry for the last couple of years”—that direction being toward AAM. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) evidently has come to the same conclusion.
Miami Executive is just one of many nodes within FDOT’s proposed aerial highway network, unveiled in 2025. Under a phased plan, the agency intends to create routes linking Miami and Key West, Tampa and Naples, Pensacola and Tallahassee, and other regional city pairs. This year, the state passed legislation that would make it easier to build vertiports in these locations.
As MDAD conducts operational air taxi testing, FDOT is developing SunTrax—the nation’s first aerial AAM test track and a dedicated proving ground for new aviation technologies. Bell said the data being collected at different ALTA locations can support the SunTrax testing efforts significantly. He said the site is still in the “nascent stages.”
Once complete, though, it will house multiple vertiports, hangars, charging stations, test aprons, and even a building that serves as a mock passenger lounge, complete with simulated security and boarding processes. MDAD said SunTrax and its KTMB pilot program will go hand in hand.
FDOT is also one of eight winning bidders for the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP)—a planned series of trials with precertified AAM aircraft that will include operations at airports. Miami Executive could be one of them, given BDI’s selection as one of FDOT’s eIPP partners.
The agency is also working with Archer, Electra, Joby Aviation, and Beta Technologies, with which it plans to trial cargo delivery, passenger transport, automation, and medical
response.
Correction: BDI does not plan to install ALTA at Suntrax, as the print version of this story stated.
This feature first appeared in the July Issue 972 of the FLYING print edition.