Gözen Holding orders 100 of Vertical Aerospace’s VX4 aircraft from Avolon to bring eVTOL travel to Turkey

Gözen Hold­ing, one of Turkey’s lead­ing avi­a­tion con­glom­er­ates and own­er of Free­bird Air­lines, has com­mit­ted to pur­chase or lease up to 50 VX4 eVTOL air­craft from air­craft lessor Avolon, with the option to pur­chase or lease up to 50 addi­tion­al air­craft. 

Avolon has now placed its entire 500 VX4 eVTOL air­craft order book, being over­sub­scribed by 50 options.

Avolon and Gözen Hold­ing will col­lab­o­rate in a Work­ing Group to iden­ti­fy and tar­get local part­ners, and research poten­tial mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties, as well as infra­struc­ture and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments for UAM. 

Dómh­nal Slat­tery, CEO of Avolon, com­ment­ed: “Today marks an impor­tant mile­stone on our eVTOL jour­ney, as we have now ful­ly placed our VX4 order­book with some of the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al air­lines and avi­a­tion com­pa­nies all over the world. 

“Zero emis­sions eVTOL air trav­el will reshape the short-haul trav­el mar­ket and our part­ner­ship with Gözen Hold­ing will cre­ate a pio­neer in UAM in Turkey, bring­ing sus­tain­able air trav­el to the region.

“The strong demand for our VX4 order­book and for zero emis­sions trav­el, con­firms our view that demand for eVTOL air­craft would always out­strip sup­ply.”

Mekin Gözen, CEO of Gözen Hold­ing, added: “As an inte­gral part of the Turk­ish avi­a­tion indus­try, we feel it is incum­bent upon us to be at the fore­front of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty move­ment and that is why we iden­ti­fied Avolon, and Vertical’s VX4, as the zero-emis­sions eVTOL air­craft that will rev­o­lu­tionise air trav­el. 

“With over 15 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in Istan­bul, the city is con­stant­ly faced with con­ges­tion, which hin­ders both the cities’ devel­op­ment and attrac­tive­ness as a tourist and busi­ness loca­tion. 

“The VX4 deploy­ment will dra­mat­i­cal­ly reshape Istan­bul and the rest of Turkey and will see us cre­ate an eVTOL ecosys­tem in the coun­try — the first step in deliv­er­ing sus­tain­able air trav­el to the region and posi­tion it as a glob­al leader.”

Stephen Fitz­patrick, Founder and CEO of Ver­ti­cal com­ment­ed: “We are delight­ed that Turkey has been added to des­ti­na­tions where the VX4 will fly. 

“We look for­ward to wel­com­ing Gözen into the Ver­ti­cal fam­i­ly and con­tin­ue to cel­e­brate our grow­ing part­ner­ship with Avolon.” 

Last week, Avolon and Air Green­land, the flag-car­ri­er for Green­land, part­nered to form a Work­ing Group to com­mer­cialise zero-emis­sions air trav­el, and iden­ti­fy local infra­struc­ture and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments for eVTOL air­craft. 

In Feb­ru­ary, AirA­sia signed a non-bind­ing mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with Avolon to lease a min­i­mum of 100 VX4 eVTOL air­craft and devel­op an urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) plat­form in south­east Asia.