The Advanced Air Mobility glossary.

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)

Advanced Air Mobility

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is the emerging aviation sector that combines electric and hybrid-electric aircraft, compact landing infrastructure, and modernized airspace management to move people and cargo along routes conventional aviation underserves.

Air corridor

An air corridor is a defined volume of airspace reserved or structured for aircraft traveling between fixed points, giving Advanced Air Mobility operations predictable routes with known procedures, surveillance coverage, and traffic rules.

Air taxi

An air taxi is an on-demand passenger air service: small aircraft, typically vertical-lift, hired per trip to fly point-to-point rather than on a fixed airline schedule. The term names the service model, not an aircraft type.

Air-to-road docking

Air-to-road docking is a vehicle architecture in which a vertical-lift aircraft carries, releases, and re-couples with a road-capable ground vehicle, allowing a single mission to continue by road after the aircraft lands.

Digital twin

A digital twin is a continuously updated virtual model of a physical asset, site, or network that planners use to simulate designs, test scenarios, and make infrastructure decisions before committing to construction.

Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP)

Distributed Electric Propulsion

Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) is an architecture that spreads thrust across many small, independently controlled electric motors and rotors instead of concentrating it in one or two large powerplants.

Dual-use infrastructure

Dual-use infrastructure is a physical asset planned and built to serve more than one function or user community — for example, a facility supporting both civilian and defense operations, or one combining transportation with energy services.

eIPP

eVTOL Integration Pilot Program

The eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) is a federal pilot initiative under which the FAA partners with state, local, and tribal governments on projects that enable early eVTOL operations — and the corridors and ground infrastructure those operations require.

eVTOL

Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing

An eVTOL is an aircraft that takes off, hovers, and lands vertically using electric or hybrid-electric propulsion, pairing the runway independence of a helicopter with the redundancy of distributed electric motors.

FAA Part 135

FAA Part 135 is the certification framework for commercial operators that fly on-demand and commuter services — charter, air taxi, air ambulance, and smaller cargo — governing how a company trains crews, maintains aircraft, and controls its operations.

FATO

Final Approach and Take-Off area

The FATO — Final Approach and Take-Off area — is the defined surface at a heliport or vertiport over which an aircraft completes the final phase of its approach to a hover or landing, and from which it begins its takeoff.

Fixed-Base Operator (FBO)

Fixed-Base Operator

A Fixed-Base Operator (FBO) is a company authorized to provide aeronautical services at an airport — fueling, parking, hangar space, maintenance, and passenger handling — serving primarily general and business aviation.

Ground Support Equipment (GSE)

Ground Support Equipment

Ground support equipment is the family of vehicles and machinery that services an aircraft on the ground between flights — moving it, powering it, fueling or charging it, and loading what it carries.

Hybrid-electric propulsion

Hybrid-electric propulsion pairs an onboard fuel-based power source — a fuel-burning generator or a hydrogen fuel cell — with battery storage, so that each supplies the phases of flight it handles best.

Hydrogen fuel-cell aircraft

A hydrogen fuel-cell aircraft generates its electricity onboard by combining stored hydrogen with oxygen from the air, using that power to drive electric motors — with water vapor as the only direct emission.

Microgrid

A microgrid is a self-contained energy network — local generation, storage, and intelligent controls serving a defined site — that can operate connected to the utility grid or disconnect and run independently.

Powered-lift

Powered-lift is an aircraft category for designs that take off, land, and fly at low speed on engine-driven lift, yet depend on a fixed wing for lift in cruise — a class the FAA treats as distinct from both airplanes and rotorcraft.

Regional Air Mobility (RAM)

Regional Air Mobility

Regional Air Mobility (RAM) is the use of new-generation electric and hybrid-electric aircraft on shorter inter-city routes, typically flown from existing regional airports that scheduled commercial aviation has left underused.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)

Sustainable Aviation Fuel

Sustainable Aviation Fuel is a liquid jet fuel produced from non-petroleum feedstocks such as waste oils, agricultural residues, and captured carbon, designed to work in existing aircraft engines while cutting lifecycle carbon emissions.

Tiltrotor

A tiltrotor is an aircraft configuration in which the rotors pivot between a vertical orientation for helicopter-style takeoff and hover, and a forward orientation for efficient wing-borne cruise.

Type certification

Type certification is the process by which an aviation authority approves an aircraft design as compliant with airworthiness standards, after the manufacturer demonstrates through analysis, ground testing, and flight testing that the design is safe.

UAS Traffic Management (UTM)

Uncrewed Aircraft System Traffic Management

UAS Traffic Management (UTM) is a framework of digital services that organizes low-altitude airspace for uncrewed aircraft, coordinating flight intents, deconflicting routes, and sharing airspace information largely without human controllers.

Urban Air Mobility (UAM)

Urban Air Mobility

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is the use of electric vertical-lift aircraft to carry passengers and cargo on short flights within a metropolitan area, operating from a network of vertiports woven into the city itself.

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G)

Vehicle-to-Grid

Vehicle-to-grid is bidirectional charging: an electric vehicle draws power from the grid to charge and can discharge stored battery energy back to the grid or a facility when that energy is more valuable elsewhere.

Vertiport

A vertiport is a ground facility purpose-built for aircraft that take off and land vertically, combining landing pads with charging or fueling systems, passenger and cargo handling, and the sensing equipment that safe eVTOL operations require.