Lilium partners with Lufthansa Aviation Training to select and train pilots for its Lilium Jet

Lil­i­um has announced an indus­try-first part­ner­ship with Lufthansa Avi­a­tion Train­ing to devel­op a bespoke train­ing pro­gramme to select and train pilots to fly its eVTOL air­craft, the Lil­i­um Jet.

The first phase of this pro­gramme will con­sist of bespoke Lil­i­um-type rat­ing train­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for qual­i­fied com­mer­cial pilots. It will har­ness tech­nolo­gies includ­ing Mixed and Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty (MR/VR), open­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties to recre­ate the pro­gramme world­wide and enabling a sta­ble pipeline of qual­i­fied pilots to sup­port the growth of the com­pa­ny and the indus­try.

Lufthansa Avi­a­tion Train­ing, which is part of the Lufthansa Group, is a lead­ing air­line train­ing organ­i­sa­tion in Europe and renowned for fol­low­ing the high­est safe­ty stan­dards. It will pro­vide exper­tise into the train­ing and devel­op­ment of com­pe­ten­cies nec­es­sary to ful­fil the need for a new field of pilot­ing.

This com­pli­ments Lilium’s exper­tise in eVTOLs and the region­al air mobil­i­ty ser­vice it is build­ing. The train­ing pro­gram will be the first of its kind glob­al­ly and a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone on Lilium’s road to launch.

Com­ment­ing on the part­ner­ship, Remo Ger­ber, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer at Lil­i­um, said: “Open­ing a new pro­fes­sion­al seg­ment for pilots of the future is a chal­lenge we have long been excit­ed to under­take and Lufthansa Avi­a­tion Train­ing is the per­fect part­ner.

“Their insights, expe­ri­ence and ded­i­ca­tion to for­ward-think­ing train­ing con­cepts ensure that our pilots will be select­ed and trained to the high­est cal­i­bre, an indus­try stan­dard which we will estab­lish through this part­ner­ship.”

Lufthansa Avi­a­tion Train­ing GmbH (LAT) is one of the lead­ing com­pa­nies in the field of flight train­ing with its com­pe­tence in the train­ing and fur­ther edu­ca­tion of cock­pit and cab­in per­son­nel at twelve train­ing loca­tions world­wide.

Its cus­tomer port­fo­lio includes more than 200 nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned air­lines, includ­ing the Lufthansa Group air­lines.

Lufthansa Avi­a­tion Train­ing has almost 200 train­ing devices with­in its train­ing fleet, includ­ing air­craft for pilot train­ing, flight sim­u­la­tors of all com­mon air­craft types for pilot train­ing and emer­gency and ser­vice mock-ups for the train­ing of flight atten­dants.

Under the Euro­pean Flight Acad­e­my (EFA) brand, Lufthansa Avi­a­tion Train­ing bun­dles all Lufthansa Group flight schools in Ger­many, Switzer­land and the USA. Grad­u­ates meet the high stan­dards of the Lufthansa Group’s air­lines and have exclu­sive access to their inter­nal job mar­ket.

Lil­i­um and Lufthansa Avi­a­tion Train­ing will also joint­ly work togeth­er with EASA and FAA reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Dis­cussing the part­ner­ship fur­ther, Tiziana Heilig, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and CFO, LAT said: “We are thrilled to be work­ing with Lil­i­um to cre­ate a train­ing set­up, which is unlike any seen before. As one of the lead­ers in this vibrant sec­tor, we look for­ward to this coop­er­a­tion to share each other’s wealth of knowl­edge to pro­vide an unpar­al­leled avi­a­tion train­ing expe­ri­ence.”

The Lil­i­um Jet was unveiled in May 2019 and will offer region­al jour­neys which are con­sid­er­ably faster than rail or road. It can trav­el up to 300km in just 60 min­utes, pro­duc­ing zero emis­sions, and com­plet­ed a suc­cess­ful maid­en flight over Ger­many in the same month.

The full-scale, full-weight pro­to­type is pow­ered by 36 jet engines that allow it to take off and land ver­ti­cal­ly, and it can reach a top speed of 300 km/h. Lil­i­um plans to launch its region­al mobil­i­ty net­works in cities across the world by 2025.