DUBAI AIRSHOW 2023: Eve Air Mobility’s Urban ATM system to support KookieJar’s vertiport operations in Dubai

Eve Air Mobil­i­ty and Kook­ie­jar, a Swedish-based ver­ti­port devel­op­er, have signed a let­ter of intent (LOI) for Eve’s Urban Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment sys­tem, which will help to sup­port ver­ti­port oper­a­tions in Dubai. 

The agree­ment marks Eve’s first Urban ATM agree­ment in Dubai and Kook­ie­jar becomes the company’s 10th Urban ATM cus­tomer and fifth ver­ti­port cus­tomer, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to grow its glob­al cus­tomer base.

The agree­ment comes as Kook­ie­jar, along with its local part­ner Air Chateau, is prepar­ing to show­case Dubai’s first state of the art ver­ti­port hub facil­i­ty with eight park­ing pads and a FATO at Al Mak­toum Air­port, Dubai South.

Eve’s Urban ATM (Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment) prod­uct has been adopt­ed as part of Kook­ie­jar and Air Chateau’s grand vision for Dubai. The vision is a phased imple­men­ta­tion pro­gram in which net­works of ver­ti­ports will be con­nect­ed via Eve’s Urban ATM sys­tem to sup­port a safe and scaled Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) oper­a­tions that pro­vides a path to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion in 2025–2026.

Rob Weaver, Urban ATM glob­al busi­ness devel­op­ment lead at Eve Air Mobil­i­ty, said: “Urban air mobil­i­ty relies on infra­struc­ture with­in the low­er air space as well as acces­si­ble take­off and land­ing spots — ver­ti­ports. Eve’s Urban ATM solu­tion pro­vides an inte­grat­ed suite of soft­ware that will enable an effi­cient and pre­dictable eVTOL ecosys­tem.

“In Dubai, we are look­ing for­ward to work­ing with Kook­ie­Jar as they com­bine exper­tise in both ground and air infra­struc­ture to design a flex­i­ble, sus­tain­able and reli­able ver­ti­port net­work.”

From before take-off to after land­ing, the urban air envi­ron­ment will count on inte­grat­ed sys­tems, ser­vices and tech­nolo­gies being devel­oped by Eve to sup­port eVTOL oper­a­tions along­side UTM sys­tems and many oth­er air­space users. In the future, the advance­ment of infra­struc­ture and reg­u­la­tion will rely on these net­work man­age­ment ser­vices to enable autonomous flight.

Eve has engaged Ate­ch, Embraer’s Air Traf­fic Con­trol tech­nol­o­gy and sys­tem inte­gra­tor com­pa­ny, to sup­port the devel­op­ment of the Urban ATM soft­ware solu­tion. Eve is lever­ag­ing Atech’s expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing avi­a­tion-grade prod­ucts for ATM sys­tems in Brazil.

Kook­ie­jar is already work­ing with stake­hold­ers in Dubai to care­ful­ly think about the routes that eVTOLs will take with­in exist­ing VFR cor­ri­dors that heli­copters use today with its part­ners Ver­ti­port Hub at Air Chateau and Dubai South. 

The goal is to have eVTOLs oper­ate seam­less­ly with exist­ing com­mer­cial air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems and the UTM sys­tems. This strate­gic agree­ment will bol­ster Dubai’s posi­tion in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) indus­try by cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the syn­er­gies between Eve and Kook­ie­jar.

Was­saf Akhtar, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at Kook­ie­jar, said: “By lever­ag­ing decades of expe­ri­ence in one of the largest Urban Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions of 1,500+ air taxi oper­a­tions per day in Sao Paulo, the heli­copter cap­i­tal of the world, Eve’s Urban ATM sys­tem gives us the edge to inte­grate our Ver­ti­ports here in UAE and enable ANSPs to increase urban air­space capac­i­ty. This will pro­vide equi­table air­space access on our net­work of ver­ti­ports for eVTOLs.”

Kook­ie­Jar is also con­tin­u­ing to col­lab­o­rate with reg­u­la­tors, cus­tomers air nav­i­ga­tion ser­vice providers, fleet oper­a­tors, ver­ti­port devel­op­ers, air­ports and oth­er UAM ecosys­tems stake­hold­ers glob­al­ly to advance con­cepts and devel­op tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port ini­tial oper­a­tion and scal­ing of UAM oper­a­tions from an ATM per­spec­tive.