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South Korea: MintAir Opens New Highway in the Sky for AAM Flight Service

MintAir, a South Kore­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) ser­vice provider, is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Wemap and the City of Seong­nam, to tri­al a core enabling tech­nol­o­gy, a 4D map, for AAM flight route devel­op­ment and oper­a­tions, reports a press release.

Deploy­ing a com­mer­cial drone, the demon­stra­tion flight was per­formed at the Hous­ing Expo site in Seong­nam two weeks ago. This 4D map was con­struct­ed via using real images of urban build­ings and air­space.

The release states, “The map pro­vides a pre­cise fly­ing cor­ri­dor for UAV and AAM routes, enables emer­gency route change, and pre­vents col­lu­sion with obsta­cles such as high-rise build­ings. Fur­ther­more, the map pro­vides real-time updates of air­space infor­ma­tion which is crit­i­cal for the safe oper­a­tion of remote pilot­ed or autonomous flights.”

Eugene Choi

Eugene Choi, MintAir CEO and Founder, com­ment­ed, “Our mis­sion is to devel­op the safest advanced air mobil­i­ty ser­vice in both urban and region­al routes and the demon­stra­tion of the 4D AAM map solu­tion is an impor­tant step for­ward to achiev­ing this mis­sion.”

He con­tin­ued, “We have suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ed a crit­i­cal enabling tech­nol­o­gy for the safe oper­a­tion of AAM ser­vice in urban routes.”

The col­lab­o­ra­tion is in readi­ness for the K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge pro­gram organ­ised by the South Kore­an Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port. In May, MintAir formed a con­sor­tium with Lotte Group and its sub­sidiaries (Lotte Rental, Lotte Engi­neer­ing & Con­struc­tion and Lotte Data Com­mu­ni­ca­tion). A pro­pos­al was then sub­mit­ted to par­tic­i­pate in the Grand Chal­lenge pro­gram.

The 4D map is to sup­port pas­sen­ger and car­go trans­porta­tion via the pro­posed AAM hub in Seong­nam, a satel­lite city in met­ro­pol­i­tan Seoul. This hub has the abil­i­ty to pro­vide urban and region­al air ser­vices direct­ly from a major met­ro­pol­i­tan pop­u­la­tion cen­tre to any­where in Korea, includ­ing even the more remote des­ti­na­tions such as the Jeju­do and Ulle­ung­do islands.

The tri­al comes soon after MintAir’s recent announce­ment con­cern­ing the sign­ing of a LoI (Let­ter of Intent), to add Electra.aero’s nine-pas­sen­ger eSTOL air­craft to its fleet, to pro­vide region­al air ser­vice in the South Kore­an mar­ket. MintAir is also form­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships with Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty and Sky­works Aero­nau­tics.

MintAir selects its fleet of elec­tric air­craft based on four cri­te­ria: Supe­ri­or safe­ty under pow­er loss sit­u­a­tions through glid­ing or autoro­ta­tion; ener­gy-sav­ing lift effi­cien­cy; low­er oper­at­ing cost; and a clear path to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion via exist­ing reg­u­la­tions. The com­pa­ny plans to launch an urban air ser­vice using elec­tric rotor­craft and a region­al air ser­vice util­is­ing eSTOL air­craft.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.mintair.kr/en

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