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AIR confirms next phase of participation in AFWERX Agility Prime, as it continues to develop its personal eVTOL aircraft

Per­son­al eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er AIR has announced its next phase of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the US Air Force’s AFWERX Agili­ty Prime pro­gram, which is help­ing to pro­pel the devel­op­ment of the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) indus­try.

Fol­low­ing AIR’s accep­tance to the pro­gram in 2022, the com­pa­ny has now com­plet­ed Agili­ty Prime’s third phase and entered into a for­mal agree­ment to exe­cute its work togeth­er. The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly scout­ing sev­er­al loca­tions to build out its pres­ence in the USA and con­tin­ue flight test­ing of its inau­gur­al eVTOL air­craft, AIR ONE, in the coun­try.

The part­ner­ship will dri­ve AIR’s con­tin­u­ous devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts on the company’s jour­ney to launch per­son­al air mobil­i­ty as a viable option for con­sumers’ every­day com­mutes.

Rani Plaut, CEO and co-founder of AIR, said: “It’s thrilling AFWERX under­stands the unique promise of AIR ONE, which is capa­ble of ranges and speeds that far exceed AOI‑2 require­ments. We are con­fi­dent in our abil­i­ty to deliv­er the free­dom of flight to every­day con­sumers, espe­cial­ly with the sup­port of such a pres­ti­gious pro­gram as Agili­ty Prime.

“We’re look­ing for­ward to demon­strat­ing that AAM is tru­ly a team sport, as we assem­ble along­side oth­er indus­try lead­ers work­ing with the U.S. Air Force to accel­er­ate eVTOL take­off and mar­ket deliv­ery world­wide.” 

The hours of flight test­ing per­formed in the USA will also offer AFWERX valu­able data to deter­mine AIR ONE’s via­bil­i­ty for use in Air Force logis­tics mis­sions, per its Area of Inter­est (AOI) 2 goal seek­ing eVTOL air­craft capa­ble of car­ry­ing one to two peo­ple more than 10 miles at a speed of at least 45 miles per hour. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed for per­son­al civil­ian use, AIR ONE’s dis­tinc­tive size and plat­form offers the Air Force a unique ref­er­ence point with­in the pro­gram. 

Capa­ble of tak­ing off and land­ing on any flat sur­face with a 550-pound (250kg) pay­load, the all-elec­tric two-seater AIR ONE can fly at speeds of up to 155 mph (250 km/h) on a sin­gle charge.

Expand­ing the eVTOL pro­file types with­in the pro­gram, AIR ONE’s sim­ple design includes eight fixed motors, com­pared to more com­plex, cost­ly tilt motor designs. The air­craft’s pro­file is rel­e­vant for a slew of oth­er appli­ca­tions, includ­ing eVTOL pilot train­ing, defense, car­go, and agri­cul­ture. 

Lt. Col. John Tekell, Agili­ty Prime Branch Chief, added: “Agili­ty Prime ana­lyt­ics pre­dict low­er oper­a­tions and main­te­nance costs of eVTOL air­craft through mechan­i­cal sim­plic­i­ty. The suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion to for­ward flight from a VTOL mode with fixed motors high­lights the inge­nu­ity of small busi­ness­es in achiev­ing mechan­i­cal­ly sim­ple designs.” 

Since AIR’s emer­gence from stealth only two years ago, the AIR ONE pro­to­type (AIR ZERO) has per­formed numer­ous rounds of full-scale, full weight flight tests, includ­ing hov­er-to-cruise and cruise-to-hov­er tran­si­tions, mak­ing AIR one of very few in the indus­try to have com­plet­ed such mile­stones.

Hav­ing already gar­nered more than 800 cus­tomer pre­orders and a wait­ing list, AIR plans to deliv­er the first batch of AIR ONE vehi­cles to con­sumers fol­low­ing air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The com­pa­ny has also pre­vi­ous­ly announced inter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships with air and sea mobil­i­ty com­pa­nies, estab­lish­ing a net­work to ser­vice and sup­port AIR’s grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of users. 

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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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