Spain’s first air taxi demo flights to take place in Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela by 2022

Spain’s nation­al air nav­i­ga­tion author­i­ty, ENAIRE, has announced plans to begin the coun­try’s first air taxi demon­stra­tions in Barcelona and San­ti­a­go de Com­postela by 2022.

The news was announced last week by Angel Luis Arias, the Gen­er­al Direc­tor of ENAIRE, in a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence organ­ised by the Offi­cial Col­lege of Aero­nau­ti­cal Engi­neers of Spain. ENAIRE works on Euro­pean projects to man­age the future mobil­i­ty of peo­ple in urban and peri-urban areas. This will be via fly­ing vehi­cles and, in par­tic­u­lar, air taxis, as well as activ­i­ties such as drone parcels.

It cur­rent­ly par­tic­i­pates in two EU-fund­ed projects, which have just been award­ed, financed with Euro­pean Hori­zon 2020 funds through the SESAR Joint Under­tak­ing on U‑Space and Urban Air Mobil­i­ty. 

Both are sched­uled to have air taxi demon­stra­tions in 2022 across Europe, with ENAIRE man­ag­ing Spain’s first air taxi demo flights.

Arias said: “It is nec­es­sary to take urban mobil­i­ty to the third dimen­sion, to air­space, and to do it in a more effi­cient and sus­tain­able way.

“ENAIRE, as a pub­lic enti­ty of the Min­istry of Trans­port, Mobil­i­ty and Urban Agen­da, is will­ing to exer­cise its respon­si­bil­i­ty and gen­er­ate a dri­ving and facil­i­tat­ing effect for pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies or inter­est­ed pub­lic bod­ies to allow Spain to be among the lead­ers in the devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion of this new sec­tor.”

No details have been revealed about which eVTOL air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er will be involved in the flight test­ing, but this lat­est announce­ment reflects the grow­ing momen­tum in Europe to intro­duce Urban Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions in its cities.

In Sep­tem­ber, Volo­copter was announced as the ‘first indus­tri­al part­ner’ in the Paris Region’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty project, which will allow the com­pa­ny to test its VoloC­i­ty eVTOL air­craft in the French cap­i­tal next year.

And Chi­nese firm EHang is also pur­su­ing oper­a­tions in Spain, after sign­ing strate­gic agree­ments with Lliria and Seville. Addi­tion­al­ly, it is work­ing with author­i­ties in Linz, Aus­tria, and plans to con­duct an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty tri­al in the city using its flag­ship two-seater, aer­i­al autonomous vehi­cle (AAV) — the 216.

Arias stressed the U‑Space con­cept under devel­op­ment in Europe will be essen­tial to allow this new air mobil­i­ty. U‑space is a set of new ser­vices and spe­cif­ic pro­ce­dures designed to sup­port safe, effi­cient and secure access to air­space for large num­bers of drones.

These ser­vices rely on a high lev­el of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and automa­tion of func­tions, whether they are on board the drone itself, or are part of the ground-based envi­ron­ment.

U‑space also pro­vides an enabling frame­work to sup­port rou­tine drone oper­a­tions, as well as a clear and effec­tive inter­face to manned avi­a­tion, ATM/ANS ser­vice providers and author­i­ties.

ENAIRE has been work­ing inten­sive­ly on U‑Space since its incep­tion by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, with the pub­li­ca­tion of the ‘U‑Space Blue­print’ in 2017, col­lab­o­rat­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in nation­al and inter­na­tion­al projects.

It pro­vides aero­drome con­trol ser­vice in 21 air­ports, includ­ing those with the high­est traf­fic, and en-route and approach con­trol, through five con­trol cen­ters: Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Gran Canaria, Pal­ma and Seville. 

In addi­tion, it also pro­vides com­mu­ni­ca­tion, nav­i­ga­tion and sur­veil­lance ser­vices to 45 air con­trol tow­ers.