Halo becomes Eve Urban Air Mobility’s launch customer and orders 200 eVTOL aircraft, with deliveries to start in 2026

Eve Urban Air Mobil­i­ty has announced Halo, the British and US heli­copter trav­el provider, as its launch cus­tomer in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket. The part­ner­ship includes an order for 200 eVTOL air­craft, with deliv­er­ies expect­ed to start in 2026.

Under the agree­ment, which is regard­ed as one of the first inter­na­tion­al eVTOL oper­a­tor part­ner­ships of its kind, Halo will work with Eve to devel­op a new eVTOL oper­a­tion in both the UK and USA.

It will also ben­e­fit from the work Eve has already invest­ed in the UK mar­ket, which includes work­ing with the coun­try’s civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty on a con­cept of oper­a­tions for inte­grat­ing air taxis and eVTOL air­craft. Eve is an inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny formed by Embraer S.A. to accel­er­ate the UAM ecosys­tem around the world.

Andre Stein, Pres­i­dent & CEO of Eve Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, said: “This part­ner­ship is an impor­tant step for Eve to assume its posi­tion as a glob­al leader in the UAM indus­try. We are ready to build the future of mobil­i­ty with our part­ners in an extreme­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive way. Halo is aligned with our mis­sion to cre­ate com­pre­hen­sive Urban Air Mobil­i­ty solu­tions and this order marks an impor­tant mile­stone for Eve in key mar­kets.

“We are con­fi­dent that this mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial rela­tion­ship will have a pos­i­tive impact for many future users and enable both com­pa­nies to grow their busi­ness­es expo­nen­tial­ly.”

Formed through the align­ment of Halo Avi­a­tion in the UK and Asso­ci­at­ed Air­craft Group (AAG) in the USA, Halo offers trans­porta­tion in the lead­ing heli­copter types in their class pilot­ed by instru­ment-rat­ed pilots. In the UK, Halo offers ver­ti­cal lift via char­ter, card, frac­tion­al own­er­ship and full own­er­ship-man­age­ment pro­grammes. Its fleet of Agusta/Leonardo AW109 and AW169 heli­copters dis­patch from bases in the south of Eng­land, around Lon­don, the Mid­lands and the Chan­nel Islands.

In the USA, Halo pro­vides heli­copter char­ter, frac­tion­al own­er­ship and heli­copter main­te­nance ser­vices from New York, Teter­boro, Bridge­port, Prov­i­dence and Philadel­phia.

Ken­neth C. Ric­ci, Prin­ci­pal of Direc­tion­al Avi­a­tion, invest­ment fund of which Halo is part of, said: “We believe Eve has designed an air­craft that is well-pre­pared for not only ini­tial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion but also has a proven track record of pro­duc­tion. The out­stand­ing lin­eage of air­craft design, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion that Embraer brings to this air­craft posi­tions Eve with sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages in the com­pet­i­tive land­scape.

“And our back­ground as oper­a­tors has taught us that prod­uct sup­port is absolute­ly vital to the over­all suc­cess of new pro­grams. The rela­tion­ship between Embraer and Eve will cre­ate one of the most suc­cess­ful glob­al prod­uct sup­port infra­struc­tures in the indus­try.

“Final­ly, the work that Eve and Embraer have com­plet­ed around their traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem is just one more exam­ple of how unique­ly posi­tioned Eve is to help us deliv­er on our vision.”

Beyond the ini­tial order and col­lab­o­ra­tion to devel­op a new eVTOL oper­a­tion, Eve and Halo will also part­ner on the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of Eve’s Urban Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment sys­tem, as well as the fleet oper­a­tions and ser­vices prod­uct offer­ings that Eve pro­vides as an ecosys­tem inte­gra­tor for urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions.

Eve says its eVTOL design rep­re­sents a sim­ple and intu­itive design that con­tin­ues to reach devel­op­ment mile­stones. The first flight of the engi­neer­ing sim­u­la­tor was con­duct­ed in July 2020 and proof of con­cept in Octo­ber 2020.

eVTOL Insights spoke to David Rot­tblatt, VP of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Eve Urban Air Mobil­i­ty Solu­tions as part of its pop­u­lar pod­cast series, where he talked more about the com­pa­ny’s work in the indus­try.

In addi­tion to the air­craft pro­gram, Eve is har­ness­ing the exper­tise of both Embraer and Ate­ch, a sub­sidiary of the Embraer Group, in pro­vid­ing glob­al­ly recog­nised air traf­fic man­age­ment soft­ware to cre­ate the solu­tions that will help safe­ly scale the urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try going for­ward.