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Lilium heads to Spain and begins next phase of flight testing with fifth generation demonstrator

Lil­i­um has begun the next phase of flight test­ing in Spain with its fifth gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor, Phoenix 2. 

Over the com­ing months at the ATLAS Flight Test Cen­tre, locat­ed in Vil­lacar­ril­lo, south­ern Spain, Lil­i­um plans to extend the flight enve­lope through full tran­si­tion and high-speed flight. These devel­op­ments come after suc­cess­ful flight test­ing with the same air­craft in south­ern Ger­many last year. 

Lil­i­um also plans to intro­duce an addi­tion­al demon­stra­tor air­craft, Phoenix 3, which is sched­uled to arrive in Spain for the first flight this sum­mer. This air­craft is expect­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly accel­er­ate the flight test cam­paign, allow­ing Lil­i­um to increase learn­ings and reduce pro­gram risks.

Togeth­er with excel­lent weath­er con­di­tions, the ATLAS Flight Test Cen­ter pro­vides opti­mal infra­struc­ture and enables air­craft to fly over a large, unpop­u­lat­ed area while tran­si­tion­ing ful­ly to high-speed wing-borne flight. 

The mod­ern facil­i­ties and sup­port from the Andalu­sian Foun­da­tion for Aero­space Devel­op­ment (“FADA”) and Cen­ter for Advanced Aero­space Tech­nolo­gies (“CATEC”) have been instru­men­tal in set­ting Lil­i­um up for a suc­cess­ful flight test cam­paign.

Daniel Wie­gand, Co-Founder and CEO of Lil­i­um said: “We are excit­ed to have kicked off our next phase of flight test­ing in Spain. This step takes us even clos­er to reach­ing our goal of cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able and acces­si­ble mode of high-speed, low noise region­al air mobil­i­ty.”

Last month, Net­Jets, the world’s largest pri­vate avi­a­tion com­pa­ny and avi­a­tion train­ing firm Flight­Safe­ty Inter­na­tion­al signed a MoU with Lil­i­um for the right to pur­chase up to 150 eVTOL air­craft.

The arrange­ment will intro­duce more options to Net­Jets own­ers to com­ple­ment their exist­ing flight pat­terns, with the com­pa­ny antic­i­pat­ing to sup­port Lil­i­um with a pri­vate sales cam­paign for indi­vid­u­als to pur­chase the Lil­i­um Jet. 

In Octo­ber 2021, Stuttgart Air­port was expect­ed to become a hub for region­al elec­tric flights with zero oper­at­ing emis­sions after announc­ing an agree­ment with Lil­i­um.

The hub is join­ing the planned south­ern Ger­man net­work, which already con­sists of Munich and Nurem­berg air­ports. 

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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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