The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Transportation broke ground on June 25 on the Vertical Take-Off and Landing Procedures and Analysis Range, or V-PAR, at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City. The roughly $8.3 million facility gives the agency its first dedicated range for studying how electric and hybrid vertical takeoff and landing aircraft actually behave around vertiports.
Completion is scheduled for summer 2027. That date matters more than the ceremony.
DroneXL has tracked the widening gap between commercial eVTOL ambition and federal research capacity all year, from the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program selections in March to Joby Aviation‘s New York demonstration flights in April. V-PAR is the FAA building the lab after the experiment has already started.
V-PAR Puts A Vertiport Lab Next To Will Rogers World Airport
V-PAR is a dedicated outdoor test range on the west side of the Monroney campus, adjacent to Will Rogers World Airport, where the FAA and its partners will fly and measure vertical takeoff and landing aircraft under controlled conditions, close to the agency’s existing radar and training infrastructure, according to Aerospace Testing International.
The initial buildout includes a touchdown and liftoff area, a taxiway, a verticraft apron with two parking spaces, a covered verticraft shelter, an observation and operations building, electric aircraft charging capability, and supporting lighting and utilities, per the FAA’s announcement. “Verticraft” is the agency’s umbrella term for aircraft that take off and land vertically.
The research agenda reads like a list of everything the industry still cannot answer with public data: wake turbulence and separation, downwash and outwash effects, radiofrequency interference, vertiport operations, arrival and departure routes, airspace procedures, human factors, emergency planning, and flow simulations. Future expansion could add more landing sites, expanded charging infrastructure, a secondary vertipad, and a short takeoff and landing runway.
The Project Took Five Years To Reach A Shovel
Planning for V-PAR began with concept studies in fall 2021, and Congress appropriated an initial $6 million in spring 2024. C.H. Guernsey completed the design in October 2025 with support from vertiport specialist Heliplanners, and Maguire O’Hara Construction won the build contract in March 2026, as reported by eVTOL Insights.
At the ceremony, Deputy Transportation Secretary Steven Bradbury said the facility will “strengthen our ability to conduct research, train people, and support the future of aviation.” FAA Deputy Administrator Chris Rocheleau said advanced air mobility aircraft must meet the same safety standards as everything else in the National Airspace System, and that V-PAR will supply the operational data to support their integration.
The Flights V-PAR Should Inform Are Already In The Air
The FAA selected eight eVTOL Integration Pilot Program projects across 26 states in March, clearing pre-certification eVTOL flights in controlled airspace, and Oklahoma is among the participating states. A V-PAR kickoff meeting that same month brought FAA divisions, manufacturers, academia, and government partners together to coordinate the research agenda.
The commercial side is moving faster than the research side. Joby flew the first point-to-point eVTOL route in New York City history on April 27, from JFK to Manhattan. Florida signed a law in April authorizing full state funding of public vertiports, with a December 2026 commercial launch target written into state transportation policy.
V-PAR also cements Oklahoma’s position in advanced aviation. The state hosts the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma‘s FAA drone test site, designated in January alongside Indiana, plus the largest BVLOS waiver in the country at 976 square kilometers (377 square miles). Manna Air Delivery picked Tulsa for its US drone manufacturing base, about 170 kilometers (105 miles) to the northeast. V-PAR gives that cluster a permanent federal research anchor.
DroneXL’s Take
I want this range to exist. Downwash and outwash behavior around vertiports is one of the genuinely unanswered questions in this sector. There is little solid public data on what a multi-rotor aircraft at maximum weight throws at a passenger boarding 20 meters (65 feet) away, or what a high-power charging pad does to the radiofrequency environment around it. Those answers decide whether vertiports can sit where the business models need them, in dense urban cores next to the people who will ride these aircraft. The FAA building a place to generate that data is the right move.
The pace is the problem. Concept studies started in fall 2021. The first federal dollar arrived in spring 2024. The shovel hit dirt in June 2026, and the doors open in summer 2027. That is six years from idea to operation for a landing pad with a shelter and a small control building, priced at $8.3 million. In the same window, Florida wrote and signed a vertiport funding law in a single legislative session, and Joby went from prototype to flying demo routes over the East River. I watched that aircraft fly its JFK-to-Manhattan route in April. The industry V-PAR is supposed to instruct has lapped the classroom.
The sequencing risk is concrete. If Florida’s December 2026 launch target holds, paying passengers will board eVTOLs at commercial vertiports at least six months before the FAA’s own research range opens. The downwash and procedure data that should shape vertiport standards will then be collected after early operators have already improvised those answers at live sites. This agency has a pattern here: the Part 108 final rule blew past its February 1 deadline and still has not landed. Watch whether summer 2027 holds. On a campus the FAA already owns, next to its own radar and training infrastructure, there is no excuse if it doesn’t.
Sources: Federal Aviation Administration, eVTOL Insights, Aerospace Testing International.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
