Global airport operator Fraport and Lilium to collaborate on development of commercial eVTOL network

Air­port oper­a­tor Fra­port and Lil­i­um will work togeth­er and explore required plan­ning and approval steps for state-of-the-art infra­struc­ture for the imple­men­ta­tion of com­mer­cial eVTOL oper­a­tions at air­ports.

The part­ner­ship, which was announced today (Wednes­day), will start by prepar­ing Ger­many and the indus­try for the intro­duc­tion of region­al elec­tric air mobil­i­ty through work­ing with indus­try groups and the coun­try’s gov­ern­ment to joint­ly dis­cuss and accel­er­ate nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry work.

Fra­port and Lil­i­um plan to analyse future mobil­i­ty con­cepts for ver­ti­port net­works that are suit­able for elec­tric air­craft. Both com­pa­nies will also exam­ine how future ver­ti­port con­cepts for this type of mobil­i­ty could look like, espe­cial­ly at and around air­ports.

The Fra­port part­ner­ship will com­ple­ment Lilium’s exist­ing part­ner­ships at air­ports across Ger­many includ­ing the air­ports of Stuttgart, Munich, Nurem­berg, Cologne-Bonn and Düs­sel­dorf. Fra­port is active at 30 inter­na­tion­al air­ports across four con­ti­nents.

Alexan­der Lauken­mann, Senior Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Avi­a­tion, Fra­port AG: “In this col­lab­o­ra­tive endeav­or, our focus is on exam­in­ing the impact of eVTOLs on air­port infra­struc­ture. As a cut­ting-edge and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able prospect for region­al avi­a­tion, eVTOLs pos­sess the poten­tial to address and devel­op new mod­els of indi­vid­ual trav­el and mobil­i­ty require­ments in a sus­tain­able man­ner in the years to come.

“Fra­port, being Germany´s inter­modal hub Num­ber One, stands as a glob­al fron­trun­ner in seam­less­ly con­nect­ing diverse trans­porta­tion modes. Our com­mit­ment is to uphold and expand this lead­er­ship.”

In recent years, Lil­i­um has con­duct­ed var­i­ous imple­men­ta­tion stud­ies with air­ports and air traf­fic con­trol author­i­ties on eVTOL infra­struc­ture imple­men­ta­tion top­ics con­firm­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of region­al avi­a­tion with eVTOLs.

These stud­ies have been relat­ed to suit­able loca­tions, struc­tur­al imple­men­ta­tion and air­space inte­gra­tion pro­ce­dures, includ­ing poten­tial use cas­es and routes. Based on this work, Lil­i­um is con­tin­u­ous­ly work­ing on part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tions with the rel­e­vant pri­vate and pub­lic stake­hold­ers to grow the ecosys­tem and poten­tial net­work for eVTOL oper­a­tions to make elec­tric avi­a­tion a real­i­ty in Ger­many.

Lil­i­um CEO Klaus Roewe, added: “With Fra­port, we have part­nered with one of the most renowned inter­na­tion­al air­port oper­a­tors in the world. Through this part­ner­ship, we expect to be able to ana­lyze the con­di­tions for region­al avi­a­tion with elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered and qui­et jets.

“Our goal is to joint­ly advance reg­u­la­to­ry and prac­ti­cal steps for suit­able frame­work con­di­tions for elec­tric avi­a­tion and our poten­tial cus­tomers in Ger­many and Europe.”