Volocopter’s 2X aircraft completes first public crewed test flight in South Korea

Volo­copter has com­plet­ed the first ever pub­lic crewed test flight of an eVTOL air taxi in South Korea, with its 2X air­craft com­plet­ing a five-minute demo in the coun­try’s cap­i­tal, Seoul.

The his­toric event took place at Gim­po Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and was attend­ed by The Republic’s Min­is­ter for Land, Infra­struc­ture, and Trans­port (MoLIT) Noh Hyeong Ouk, togeth­er with senior offi­cials from Del­e­ga­tion of the Euro­pean Union to the Repub­lic of Korea and Ger­man Embassy.

Dur­ing the flight, the 2X air­craft cov­ered a dis­tance of approx­i­mate­ly 3km, reach­ing a max­i­mum alti­tude of 50 metres and a max­i­mum speed of 45 km/h. The test flight was part of the MOLIT’s UAM demon­stra­tion event – ‘Open the Urban Sky’.

Flo­ri­an Reuter, CEO of Volo­copter, said, “With MOLIT’s com­pre­hen­sive K‑UAM roadmap, South Korea is well posi­tioned to achieve the goal of com­mer­cial­is­ing UAM by 2025. We are extreme­ly hon­ored to con­duct the nation’s first crewed pub­lic eVTOL test flight today and prove yet again that the future of air taxis is here and now with Volocopter’s air­craft.

“As the pio­neers of the UAM indus­try, we look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with friends and part­ners from both the gov­ern­ment agen­cies and pri­vate sec­tors to make UAM a real­i­ty in South Korea.” 

Seoul is the sec­ond city in Asia that Volo­copter has con­duct­ed a test flight fol­low­ing the first suc­cess­ful pub­lic flight tri­al over Singapore’s Mari­na Bay area in 2019.

Volo­copter has been one of the key play­ers in the indus­try which are lead­ing the pack in the urban air mobil­i­ty sec­tor, with its fam­i­ly of elec­tri­cal­ly-pow­ered air­craft. They include the VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect for pas­sen­gers and the Volo­Drone). It is the only eVTOL com­pa­ny that has obtained design and pro­duc­tion organ­i­sa­tion approvals (DOA and POA) from the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA).

EU Ambas­sador, Maria Castil­lo Fer­nan­dez, said, “2021 is a mile­stone year for the EU-South Korea rela­tions, as it marks the tenth anniver­sary of the entry into force of the free trade agree­ment between the two enti­ties. We wel­come con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tions in a wide range of sec­tors.”

Ger­man Ambas­sador to South Korea, Michael Reif­f­en­stuel, added: “South Korea and Ger­many have enjoyed a close rela­tion­ship for more than a cen­tu­ry. We are con­nect­ed by a com­mon expe­ri­ence of a divid­ed nation and strong ties in trade, edu­ca­tion, and tech­nol­o­gy. We strong­ly wel­come deep­ened coop­er­a­tion in new sec­tors such as dig­i­tal­iza­tion, e‑commerce, and urban air mobil­i­ty.”

Weath­er per­mit­ting, Volo­copter is sched­uled to con­duct a pub­lic test flight at Incheon air­port on Novem­ber 16th dur­ing K‑UAM Con­fex 2021, which will be attend­ed by the Pres­i­dent of Incheon Inter­na­tion­al Air­port Cor­po­ra­tion and May­or of Incheon Met­ro­pol­i­tan City.