Spain: EHang 216 Completes Inaugural Flight by Spanish National Police and Begins Trial Operations

EHang announced last week that its EH216 AAV com­plet­ed its inau­gur­al flight by the Span­ish Nation­al Police (SNP) at the Nation­al Acad­e­my in Ávi­la, Spain, reports a press release. Tri­al oper­a­tions by the SNP will now begin. 

The pub­lic maid­en flight was attend­ed and watched by offi­cials and guests from the Span­ish State for Secu­ri­ty, SNP, the Span­ish State Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (AESA), mem­bers of acad­e­mia insti­tu­tions, as well as the media. 

Since join­ing forces with EHang in Octo­ber 2021, SNP aims to use the EH216 for emer­gency and pub­lic safe­ty mis­sions, includ­ing access­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed areas with nuclear, radi­o­log­i­cal, bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal risks; land­ing in con­fined areas; as well as gen­er­al aer­i­al logis­tics police ser­vices.

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The cer­e­mo­ny was presided over by Rafael Pérez, the Sec­re­tary of the Span­ish State for Secu­ri­ty, who com­ment­ed, “The SNP is the first secu­ri­ty insti­tu­tion in the Euro­pean Union to oper­ate an AAV. Unmanned air­craft sys­tems (UAS) con­sti­tute an alter­na­tive tech­no­log­i­cal asset for mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es, such as deploy­ment in dan­ger­ous areas fol­low­ing a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter or an acci­dent, with­out endan­ger­ing human lives.” Adding, “The low­er oper­at­ing costs of UAS and their con­stant new appli­ca­tions show great advan­tages over tra­di­tion­al aer­i­al means.”

Pedro Pri­eto, the Direc­tor of Aer­i­al Oper­a­tions for the Span­ish Nation­al Police, said, “The capa­bil­i­ty to oper­ate the EH216 AAV from a remote com­mand and con­trol sta­tion, which may be hun­dreds of kilo­me­tres away, reflects the Nation­al Police’s com­mit­ment to ful­fil its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion objec­tives.” 

While Vic­to­ria Jing Xiang, CEO of EHang Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca, added, “EHang is proud to part­ner with a law enforce­ment agency and sup­port SNP with our AAV tech­nolo­gies to ful­fil emer­gency response and pub­lic safe­ty mis­sions. SNP’s entry into tri­al oper­a­tion of EH216 AAV lays a foun­da­tion for the deploy­ment of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in Europe and sets an excel­lent exam­ple of com­mit­ment to pub­lic safe­ty through advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.ehang.com/ehangaav