When Urban Air Mobility Becomes a Utility Problem Published 2026-02-09 The shift from aircraft hype to infrastructure-anchored operations in New York Image credit: Vertical Aerospace For more than a decade, urban air mobility (UAM) was framed as an aircraft problem. Coverage focused on battery energy density, rotor configurations, autonomy timelines, and speculative renderings of vertiports scattered across city skylines. Progress was measured in prototype flights and investor presentations rather than operational