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Lilium to supply Azul with 220 eVTOL aircraft for exclusive network in Brazil; Tesla veteran and aviation executive also join its Board of Directors

Lil­i­um is to work with Brazil­ian air­line Azul and bring region­al air mobil­i­ty to the coun­try, by sell­ing 220 eVTOL air­craft in a deal worth $1 bil­lion. The com­pa­ny has also announced Gabrielle Toledano and Hen­ri Cour­pron will join its Board of Direc­tors, fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of Lilium’s busi­ness com­bi­na­tion with Qell Acqui­si­tion Corp.

The Ger­man start­up plans to work with Azul to estab­lish a co-brand­ed net­work in the coun­try, which has close to 100 mil­lion domes­tic air pas­sen­gers every year and is cur­rent­ly one of the world’s lead­ing civil­ian heli­copter and busi­ness avi­a­tion mar­kets.

As part of the com­mer­cial arrange­ment, Lil­i­um would intend to sell the air­craft to Azul, which expect to begin oper­at­ing in 2025. The strate­gic alliance and air­craft order with Azul remain sub­ject to the par­ties final­is­ing com­mer­cial terms and defin­i­tive doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ing there­to.

These announce­ments coin­cide with Lilium’s Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Day, tak­ing place at 11am ET today (Mon­day).

Daniel Wie­gand, Co-Founder and CEO of Lil­i­um said: “Azul has brought con­ve­nient and afford­able air trav­el to under­served mar­kets across the Amer­i­c­as and this makes them an ide­al part­ner for Lil­i­um. We’re excit­ed to work with Azul’s sea­soned team to deploy a co-brand­ed eVTOL net­work in Brazil.

“We’re also thrilled to wel­come Gabrielle Toledano and Hen­ri Cour­pron to the future Board of Direc­tors of Lil­i­um N.V., where they’ll strength­en our Board with their oper­a­tional and finan­cial expe­ri­ence.”

Azul would expect to oper­ate and main­tain the Lil­i­um Jet fleet, while Lil­i­um would pro­vide an air­craft health mon­i­tor­ing plat­form, replace­ment bat­ter­ies and oth­er cus­tom spare parts. Azul also expects to sup­port Lil­i­um with the nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry approval process­es in Brazil for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Lil­i­um Jet and any oth­er required reg­u­la­to­ry approvals.

Lil­i­um plans to be in oper­a­tion in mul­ti­ple regions in 2025, offer­ing peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el faster than exist­ing high-speed alter­na­tives and with zero-oper­at­ing emis­sions. Lilium’s Brazil launch plans would be expect­ed to pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant incre­men­tal rev­enue along­side pre­vi­ous­ly announced net­work launch plans in Europe and the US.

John Rodger­son, CEO of Azul, said: “Azul is the largest domes­tic air­line in Brazil in terms of cities served and dai­ly depar­tures. Our brand pres­ence, our unique route net­work, and our pow­er­ful loy­al­ty pro­gram give us the tools to cre­ate the mar­kets and demand for the Lil­i­um Jet net­work in Brazil.

“As we did in the Brazil­ian domes­tic mar­ket over the last 13 years, we look for­ward to again, now with the Lil­i­um Jet, work­ing to cre­ate a whole new mar­ket in the years to come.”

In being appoint­ed to Lil­i­um’s Board of Direc­tors, which will be chaired by for­mer Air­bus CEO Tom Enders, Toledano brings more than 30 years of lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence in tech­nol­o­gy, gam­ing and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion with­in For­tune 500 com­pa­nies such as Tes­la, Elec­tron­ic Arts, Microsoft and Ora­cle.

She is cur­rent­ly the Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer at Key­stone Strat­e­gy LLC. Her pre­vi­ous posi­tions include the role of Exec­u­tive in Res­i­dence for Com­cast Ven­tures and its port­fo­lio com­pa­nies and Chief Peo­ple Offi­cer at Tes­la, Elec­tron­ic Arts and Siebel Sys­tems.

And with over 30 years in man­age­ment posi­tions in the avi­a­tion indus­try, Hen­ri Cour­pron will add exten­sive indus­try exper­tise to Lilium’s board. He is cur­rent­ly Chair­man of Plane View Part­ners LLC, an avi­a­tion and aero­space advi­so­ry firm, and was pre­vi­ous­ly the Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Inter­na­tion­al Lease Finance Cor­po­ra­tion (“ILFC”) where he led a series of strate­gic ini­tia­tives to strength­en its finan­cial posi­tion, gov­er­nance and glob­al foot­print.

Pri­or to join­ing ILFC, he served for 20 years at Air­bus in a num­ber of man­age­ment posi­tions, includ­ing Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Air­bus, North Amer­i­ca. Hen­ri is also a for­mer direc­tor of Azul Air­lines in Brazil and TAP Por­tu­gal. He is a cur­rent direc­tor of Breeze Air­ways.

Toledano, said: “Lilium’s vision is key to the future of how we trav­el. I look for­ward to bring­ing my oper­a­tive expe­ri­ences to help­ing the com­pa­ny scale and reach its poten­tial to pro­vide an acces­si­ble mode of high-speed, region­al trans­porta­tion with zero oper­at­ing emis­sions to the world.”

Cour­pron, Founder and Chair­man of Plane View Part­ners LLC, and a for­mer CEO of ILFC and Air­bus North Amer­i­ca, added: “Emis­sions free avi­a­tion is not a mat­ter of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

“With a unique design, Lil­i­um is bring­ing togeth­er new ideas and tal­ent with proven exec­u­tives and tech­nol­o­gy under Daniel’s vision and lead­er­ship. I am delight­ed to have been invit­ed to pass my decades of expe­ri­ence along to the next gen­er­a­tion of inno­va­tors and lead­ers in avi­a­tion.”

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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