Most municipal airports compete individually for tenants, grants and investment. Along California’s Central Coast, four public-use airports are instead being planned as pieces of a single regional system — an approach economic developers believe could help shape how communities prepare for advanced air mobility.

The Monterey Bay Economic Partnership is coordinating planning across airports in Marina, Salinas, Watsonville and Hollister, backed by a $7.45 million grant from the state of California. Rather than creating a single demonstration site, the initiative is examining how multiple airports could operate as a connected system supporting aircraft testing, future commercial operations, emergency response and regional transportation.

The approach shifts attention from the aircraft themselves to the infrastructure that will eventually have to support them. While much of the advanced air mobility industry remains focused on aircraft certification and commercialization, Monterey Bay’s effort assumes that airports, utilities, regulators and communities will also have to learn how to operate together.

“We already had activity happening at each of these airports,” said Lavera Alexander, MBEP’s chief growth officer. “The question became: How do we bring that activity together so we can learn from it and begin building the system we’ll ultimately need?”

Most AAM testing today occurs at individual facilities. Monterey Bay’s project instead asks what happens when aircraft begin moving among different airports across an interconnected region. How should flights transition between airports? What infrastructure needs to be standardized? Which capabilities belong at every airport, and which should remain concentrated at specialized facilities?

Those questions could become increasingly important as regions consider how electric aircraft, autonomous systems, drones, cargo operations and emergency services might fit into existing aviation infrastructure.

The four airports also present planners with intentionally different conditions. Some need substantial infrastructure upgrades, while others are already connected to an emerging aviation cluster that includes aircraft developers such as Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, Wisk Aero and Reliable Robotics.

Rather than treating those differences as an impediment, project leaders see them as part of the experiment.

“If you’ve seen one public-use airport, you’ve seen one public-use airport,” Alexander said. “Each one has different needs, different assets, and different opportunities.”

Sarasina Tuchen, who helped develop the federal Advanced Air Mobility strategy, said the Central Coast offers another advantage: a concentration of aircraft developers located relatively close to their testing operations.

That proximity can allow companies to iterate designs, conduct flight tests, collect data and return engineers to manufacturing or development facilities in the same day. It also gives planners an opportunity to study how airports, aircraft operators and surrounding communities interact as advanced aviation moves beyond isolated test sites.

For economic developers, the effort is about more than preparing airports for a new class of aircraft. California’s investment is also intended to position the region for jobs, workforce development and private investment associated with an emerging aerospace industry.

MBEP expects public-private partnerships to play an important role in determining how quickly additional infrastructure can be built as aircraft technology and regulatory frameworks mature.

Widespread commercial adoption of advanced air mobility remains uncertain. But Monterey Bay’s experiment is beginning to answer a question communities may soon face regardless: What needs to be in place before the aircraft are ready?

For the Central Coast, the answer begins with treating four very different airports as parts of the same system.