Eve Air Mobility signs agreements with Nautilus Aviation and Sydney Seaplanes to launch eVTOL aircraft services in Australia

Eve Air Mobil­i­ty has made two key announce­ments to help accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of Aus­trali­a’s urban air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem.

First­ly, the com­pa­ny has part­nered with Nau­tilus Avi­a­tion, a divi­sion of Mor­ris Group and North­ern Australia’s largest heli­copter oper­a­tor, which will see the intro­duc­tion of Eve’s eVTOL air­craft serv­ing some of Queensland’s most icon­ic tourism attrac­tions, includ­ing the Great Bar­ri­er Reef.

Nau­tilus has ordered 10 of Eve’s eVTOL air­craft, with flights tak­ing off over the world’s largest coral reef sys­tem by 2026. With more than 25 years’ fly­ing expe­ri­ence, Nau­tilus has a net­work of bases span­ning Cairns, Port Dou­glas, Townsville, Dar­win and Tor­res Strait (Horn Island).

Mor­ris Group Founder and CEO, Chris Mor­ris, said the new part­ner­ship with Eve accel­er­ates the progress towards 100 per cent of scenic flights over the Great Bar­ri­er Reef com­ing from zero-emis­sion elec­tric avi­a­tion. The agree­ment is also in line with Mor­ris Group’s com­mit­ment to reach net-zero emis­sion by 2030 across all of its busi­ness­es.

Mor­ris said: “This part­ner­ship is an excit­ing devel­op­ment for Nau­tilus Avi­a­tion and Mor­ris Group. We believe eco­nom­ic suc­cess and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty go hand-in-hand and aim to strength­en and enrich the envi­ron­ments in which we work. Eve’s eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy will inte­grate seam­less­ly into our oper­a­tions to deliv­er a range of excit­ing zero-emis­sion tourism expe­ri­ences.”

Nau­tilus Avi­a­tion CEO, Aaron Finn, added that Nau­tilus has had an Advanced Eco­tourism Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for eight years. How­ev­er, it has been hard to avoid the biggest impact of green­house gas emis­sions from the burn­ing of fuel in the company’s heli­copters.

“This will allow us to pro­vide emis­sion-free and qui­et tours over the Great Bar­ri­er Reef, pro­vid­ing an unmatched eco-expe­ri­ence to our cus­tomers”, he said.

Andre Stein, Pres­i­dent, and CEO of Eve, said the ini­tia­tive was an impor­tant mile­stone for the com­pa­ny. He said: “Our part­ner­ship with Nau­tilus Avi­a­tion and Mor­ris Group will see Eve air­craft serv­ing Australia’s icon­ic tourism attrac­tions with sus­tain­able, zero-emis­sions low-noise, jour­neys.

“We share the same vision toward a car­bon-neu­tral future for air mobil­i­ty and this is a great use case for the solu­tions Eve is bring­ing to the mar­ket, includ­ing our 100 per cent eVTOL and com­pre­hen­sive cus­tomer sup­port and air traf­fic man­age­ment solu­tions.”

And yes­ter­day (Mon­day), Eve made a sec­ond announce­ment where it will work with Syd­ney Sea­planes to help lay the foun­da­tions for new elec­tric air taxi oper­a­tions in Greater Syd­ney. To help achieve this, Syd­ney Sea­planes has placed a 50-strong order for Eve’s eVTOL air­craft. Progress deliv­er­ies are expect­ed to begin from 2026.

The new part­ner­ship accel­er­ates the progress towards 100 per cent of greater Sydney’s local tourism and com­muter flights com­ing from zero emis­sion elec­tric avi­a­tion.

Syd­ney Sea­planes first took to the air in 2005, with just a six-seater De Hav­il­land Beaver sea­plane. Since then, the com­pa­ny has become an inte­gral part of the dai­ly work­ings at Syd­ney Har­bour and one of the largest tourism flight oper­a­tors in Aus­tralia. Since com­menc­ing ser­vices Syd­ney Sea­planes has flown over 425,000 pas­sen­gers on 80,000 flights.

In 2020, Syd­ney sea­planes announced plans to cre­ate an all-elec­tric and zero-emis­sions region­al air­line Alt Air as soon as 2022, with first all-elec­tric flights planned as ear­ly as 2024. Intro­duc­ing eVTOL air­craft offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to extend the catch­ment of the Rose Bay avi­a­tion facil­i­ties to effi­cient­ly serve all of Greater Syd­ney.

Aaron Shaw, CEO of Syd­ney Sea­planes, said: “This is an excit­ing devel­op­ment for Syd­ney Sea­planes. Syd­ney needs a post-COVID lift and what bet­ter way to do that than by devel­op­ing high-tech and zero car­bon jobs that sup­port trans­port, tourism and the vibran­cy of this won­der­ful city. Eve’s eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy will inte­grate seam­less­ly with our elec­tric amphibi­ous fleet to deliv­er a range of tourism and com­muter jour­neys.

“Sub­ject to com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­ta­tion, we expect some flights will oper­ate from our icon­ic Rose Bay avi­a­tion ter­mi­nal in Syd­ney Har­bour. This ser­vice will have a wide­spread appeal which will allow us to open new routes beyond the Har­bour and through­out the greater Syd­ney region.”

Stein added: “We are pleased to sup­port Syd­ney Sea­planes as they seek to bring new mobil­i­ty solu­tions to Syd­ney. The Greater Syd­ney mar­ket offers sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial for scaled Urban Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions, to make the most of the icon­ic beau­ty of Syd­ney Har­bour and to improve the effi­cien­cy of move­ment to com­ple­ment exist­ing trans­port modes.

“Eve will sup­port this new part­ner­ship with com­pre­hen­sive solu­tions for air­craft oper­a­tions includ­ing air traf­fic man­age­ment solu­tions, main­te­nance, train­ing, and oth­er ser­vices.”