YUGO places 18-strong order with Ascendance Flight Technologies for its ATEA hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft

Yugo Glob­al Indus­tries has signed a con­tract with French start­up Ascen­dance Flight Tech­nolo­gies to pur­chase 18 of its VTOL hybrid-elec­tric air­craft, known as ATEA.

Ascen­dance Flight tech­nolo­gies unveiled ATEA at the end of last year, with the five-seater mod­el sched­uled to go into pro­duc­tion by 2025 and have a range of 400km. The air­craft’s new con­fig­u­ra­tion has inte­grat­ed a hybrid sys­tem patent­ed by Ascen­dance called STERNA, which is devised on an elec­tric engine pow­ered by the merg­ing of two ener­gy sources: com­bus­tion and an elec­tric bat­tery.

The air­craft fea­tures a sky-view cab­in and eight shroud­ed rotors set in a tan­dem wing con­fig­u­ra­tion which allows for increased pow­er dur­ing the take-off and land­ing phas­es, in addi­tion to sig­nif­i­cant noise reduc­tion. The mod­u­lar hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion of the air­craft has been designed to reduce by up to 80 per cent car­bon emis­sions, com­pared to exist­ing air­craft. 

 Jim Baldy, Yugo CEO and co-founder, said: “We are extreme­ly pleased to part­ner with Ascen­dance Flight Tech­nolo­gies, a key play­er in the world’s tran­si­tion to decar­bon­at­ed avi­a­tion. ATEA is the per­fect air­craft solu­tion to our main goal: bring­ing sus­tain­able, afford­able, tai­lor-made fly­ing ser­vices to our cus­tomers. The range, the capac­i­ty and the flex­i­bil­i­ty of this hybrid-elec­tric VTOL will allow us to ful­fil, in the near future, the grow­ing demand across APAC for con­ve­nient, eco-friend­ly and safe flights in the best way.”

Yugo is a pri­vate air mobil­i­ty plat­form pro­vid­ing on-demand pri­vate jets and heli­copter flights for VIP char­ter, air ambu­lance and car­go mis­sions. Yugo’s flight ser­vices are pow­ered by a large inven­to­ry com­posed of thou­sands of air­craft locat­ed all over the world, from lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Gulf­stream, Bom­bardier, Cess­na Tex­tron Avi­a­tion and Das­sault Fal­con, as well as Bell, Air­bus, Leonar­do and Robin­son.

Poten­tial routes using ATEA could include Kuala Lumpur to Sin­ga­pore, Jakar­ta to Ban­dung, Phonm Penh to Siem Reap, Mani­la to Luçon, Den­pasar to Surabaya, Bangkok to Pat­taya, Perth to Mar­garet Riv­er and Mani­la to Clark.

Thibault Bal­divia, Chief Cus­tomer Offi­cer and co-founder of Ascendance.“We are thrilled that Yugo has select­ed ATEA to be their first hybrid-elec­tric VTOL to fly their APAC routes upon deliv­ery in 2025. Sus­tain­able avi­a­tion isn’t a far-away dream, it is soon to become a real­i­ty.

“We ful­ly trust that Yugo’s expe­ri­ence and capac­i­ty to oper­ate a wide range of air mobil­i­ty solu­tions will enable them to ful­ly exploit ATEA’s fea­tures through­out the many uses we designed it for. The fast-evolv­ing Asian mar­ket offers many oppor­tu­ni­ties to rein­vent air mobil­i­ty and we look for­ward to Yugo and ATEA par­tic­i­pat­ing in its evo­lu­tion.”

Yugo’s announce­ment with Ascen­dance fol­lows on from the com­pa­ny ear­li­er news that it is part­ner­ing with Electra.aero to open up new des­ti­na­tions in the Asia-Pacif­ic region for pri­vate air trav­el.