PLANA to deliver 50 eVTOL aircraft to Japan’s SkyTaxi

PLANA will deliv­er 50 eVTOL air­craft to Japan’s Sky­Taxi for the hybrid eVTOL CP-01 cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment. The ini­tial 10 air­crafts will be deliv­ered by 2030, fol­lowed by an addi­tion­al 40 by 2040.

The com­pa­ny has also part­nered with Sky­Taxi to devel­op and oper­ate AAM air­craft. Sky­Taxi was formed last year by the Dai­ho Taxi Group, which has been oper­at­ing taxi com­pa­nies in the Osa­ka region of Japan for almost a cen­tu­ry.

Sky­Taxi is cur­rent­ly train­ing pilots, intro­duc­ing new air­craft, and con­duct­ing oper­a­tional tests in prepa­ra­tion to launch air routes that will con­nect Osaka’s city cen­tres, includ­ing Ume­da and Nam­ba, world her­itage and sight­see­ing des­ti­na­tions all over Japan, as well as Kan­sai and Kobe air­ports.

These routes are expect­ed to be oper­a­tional in time for the 2025 Osa­ka Expo. Sky­Taxi plans to launch long-dis­tance oper­a­tions focused on the tourism indus­try, util­is­ing eVTOL air­craft. Sky­Taxi stat­ed that PLANA’s CP-01 was cho­sen due to its sig­nif­i­cant­ly longer flight range through the util­i­sa­tion of a hybrid approach.

PLANA and Sky­Taxi will col­lab­o­rate on the devel­op­ment of AAM air­craft, oper­a­tional con­cepts, and inte­ri­or design con­cepts that cater to the needs of air taxi oper­a­tors, mar­ket analy­sis, and demon­stra­tions. It is also planned to devel­op cross-bor­der AAM air routes util­is­ing the CP-01, which will be sup­plied by PLANA in the future.

“This col­lab­o­ra­tive project between PLANA and Sky­Taxi will have a huge impact on the glob­al AAM indus­try by play­ers from Asia,” said Taku­to Hojo, CEO of Sky­Taxi. “We are com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing the best busi­ness with PLANA so that we can be a mod­el case for one of Asi­a’s lead­ing AAM indus­tries.”

PLANA CEO Braden Kim added: “We have opened up a huge poten­tial mar­ket in Japan and for the first time in the world, we are look­ing at cross-bor­der trav­el. We will pro­ceed with the devel­op­ment of the air­craft accord­ing to a roadmap we have designed, and con­tin­ue to devel­op more opti­mised util­i­sa­tion mod­els by under­stand­ing the speci­fici­ties of each coun­try’s mar­ket.”

Last month, PLANA intro­duced its CP-01 hybrid eVTOL air­craft which com­bines the advan­tages of heli­copters and aero­planes, offer­ing fast, effi­cient, and eco-friend­ly air mobil­i­ty solu­tions.