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Volocopter’s VoloConnect eVTOL aircraft completes first flight in its latest milestone

Volo­copter has announced its Volo­Con­nect fixed-winged pas­sen­ger air­craft com­plet­ed its first flight last month at the UP Sum­mit, an annu­al gath­er­ing of lead­ers in trans­porta­tion inno­va­tion host­ed by invest­ment firm UP Part­ners.  

Volo­copter designed the Volo­Con­nect and oth­er eVTOL air­craft to meet the high­est avi­a­tion safe­ty stan­dards accord­ing to EASA (Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency). The pro­to­type com­plet­ed its first flight after 17 months in the mak­ing and per­formed a few manoeu­vers for two min­utes and 14 sec­onds. 

The Volo­Con­nect is a lift-and-cruise air­craft with six rotors to facil­i­tate ver­ti­cal take­off, while two elec­tric fans in com­bi­na­tion with uplift-cre­at­ing wings ensure high for­ward speeds. 

A pro­to­type is cur­rent­ly being put through a demand­ing series of flight tests, includ­ing stan­dard­ised low-speed, tran­si­tion, high-speed, and engine fail­ure test­ing for auto­mat­ed and lat­er autonomous flights. 

With­in the first three test flights, the team ver­i­fied for­ward speeds up to 40 mph and 28 mph side­ward flight speeds. 

Volo­copter CEO Flo­ri­an Reuter, said: “Volocopter’s lead­er­ship in the indus­try stems from announc­ing plans and then deliv­er­ing on them vis­i­bly with pub­lic test flights. 

“Our tech­nol­o­gy plat­form has proven to deliv­er results at an astound­ing speed, with Volo­copter bring­ing these inno­v­a­tive designs off the ground, into the air, and then to cities world­wide.”  

Volo­Con­nect offers fur­ther and faster jour­neys than any oth­er Volo­copter air­craft to date, with a range of over 60 miles and flight speeds above 155 mph, and is tar­get­ing a 2026 entry into ser­vice, while the VoloC­i­ty is tar­get­ing com­mer­cial launch in 2024.  

For future ser­vices, Volo­copter intends to inte­grate its three air­craft into indi­vid­u­alised UAM ecosys­tems for cities and use its VoloIQ dig­i­tal plat­form to unite all of the company’s flight oper­a­tions, pas­sen­ger ser­vices, main­te­nance, and more for a seam­less mobil­i­ty expe­ri­ence. 

Volo­Con­nect Chief Engi­neer Sebas­t­ian Mores added: “See­ing the Volo­Con­nect soar to the sky marks the achieve­ment of one of our key mile­stones and demon­strates just what we are capa­ble of in a short time and in line with the company’s over­all strat­e­gy for crewed and uncrewed air­craft.” 

Last month, Jetex and Volo­copter signed a strate­gic part­ner­ship agree­ment to deploy and oper­ate per­ma­nent, eco­nom­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able, and inte­grat­ed urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) taxi take-off and land­ing infra­struc­ture, with Mia­mi, Sin­ga­pore and Paris where Jetex has already estab­lished its pres­ence. 

Two months before, Volo­copter became the first eVTOL air­craft com­pa­ny to con­duct both crewed and remote­ly pilot­ed test flights in France, after its full-scale 2X pro­to­type com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tions at Pon­toise Air­field near Paris.

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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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