Waymo Autonomous Vehicles Coming to Sky Harbor International Airport

The autonomous car service will begin testing drives to and from one of the world's busiest airports.

May 19, 2022

Waymo is expanding its service to Sky Harbor International Airport. Waymo

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Just one week after putting in motion plans to expand operations to downtown Phoenix, Waymo announced Wednesday it will introduce its autonomous vehicles at Sky Harbor International Airport.

According to Tamra Ingersoll, public information manager at Sky Harbor, Waymo is limited to testing at the 44th Street PHX Sky Train Station and the future 24th Street Station. For the time being, testing will not occur in the busy terminal corridors.

Initially, only Waymo employees will be able to hail rides around the clock between downtown Phoenix and Sky Harbor, one of the world's busiest airports. Onboard Waymo's Jaguar I-PACEs will be an autonomous specialist, a human "backup" monitoring the car and system while capable of taking control of the vehicle should the need arise.

Moving forward, Waymo expects to expand Sky Harbor service to Trusted Testers, members of the general public specifically selected by the company through its Waymo One app.

The Trusted Tester program is already active in downtown Phoenix. It also requires the presence of autonomous specialists onboard. Waymo expects to remove these specialists and provide fully autonomous rides throughout downtown in the coming weeks. At first, though, these driverless rides will be limited to Waymo employees.

Waymo already offers fully autonomous rides in San Francisco and metro Phoenix’s East Valley.

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