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AutoFlight completes world’s first inter-city eVTOL aircraft flight between Shenzhen and Zhuhai in China

Aut­oFlight has today (Tues­day) com­plet­ed the world’s first inter-city elec­tric air-taxi demon­stra­tion flight between the south­ern Chi­nese cities of Shen­zhen and Zhuhai.

The com­pa­ny’s five-seater Pros­per­i­ty eVTOL air­craft com­plet­ed the sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone by autonomous­ly fly­ing the 50km (31 miles) route, which took 20 min­utes. A sim­i­lar jour­ney by car would take three hours.

This achieve­ment marks the world’s first pub­lic flight of an eVTOL air­craft on a cross-sea and inter-city route, span­ning across the bay where the Pearl Riv­er meets the sea and which con­nects the two cities.

Tian Yu, founder, CEO and Co-Chair­man of Aut­oFlight said: “We are thrilled to show­case AutoFlight’s cut­ting-edge capa­bil­i­ties today in the world’s first cross-sea and inter-city eVTOL demon­stra­tion flight.

“Work­ing close­ly togeth­er with the local author­i­ties and part­ners here, and in oth­er juris­dic­tions around the world, we will con­tin­ue to dri­ve this rev­o­lu­tion to bring safe, effi­cient, sus­tain­able and afford­able eVTOL flight options to cities around the world.”

The route between Shen­zhen and Zhuhai is part of the future air traf­fic sce­nario planned by the region­al gov­ern­ment as it devel­ops its ‘low-alti­tude econ­o­my’ strat­e­gy that will see the open­ing of thou­sands of ver­ti­ports and hun­dreds of routes for eVTOL air­craft across the Greater Bay Area in south­ern Chi­na.

Low-alti­tude appli­ca­tion sce­nar­ios will include pas­sen­ger trans­port, tourism, logis­tics and emer­gency ser­vices. In the short term, plans are in devel­op­ment to achieve 300,000 car­go UAV flights in this region per year.

AutoFlight’s part­ner in the region Heli-East­ern, a major low-alti­tude gen­er­al avi­a­tion car­ri­er and heli­copter ser­vice provider, recent­ly entered an agree­ment with Aut­oFlight to pur­chase 100 Pros­per­i­ty pas­sen­ger eVTOL air­craft.

The air­craft will be used on routes such as the one demon­strat­ed by Aut­oFlight, from Shek­ou Fer­ry Port in Shen­zhen to the Jiuzhou Fer­ry Port in Zhuhai, as well as from oth­er trans­porta­tion hubs in the region.

Mr Tian con­tin­ued: “We warm­ly wel­come our strong coop­er­a­tion with Heli-East­ern and togeth­er we are rapid­ly mov­ing towards ful­ly oper­a­tional air-taxi routes all across the region.”

The demon­stra­tion flight took place in one of the world’s most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas, home to about 86 mil­lion peo­ple and in an air­space that bor­ders mul­ti­ple inter­na­tion­al air­ports, includ­ing Hong Kong, Shen­zhen and Macau.

The demon­stra­tion flight was uncrewed and ful­ly autonomous, with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for crewed pas­sen­ger flights antic­i­pat­ed with­in approx­i­mate­ly two years.

Pros­per­i­ty was designed by Frank Stephen­son, the renowned design­er who rev­o­lu­tionised the Mini and the Fiat 500, and cre­at­ed icon­ic designs for Fer­rari, McLaren and Maserati, among many oth­ers, before turn­ing his design tal­ents to the skies and the realm of fly­ing taxis.

This lat­est mile­stone from Aut­oFlight adds to a list of mile­stone already achieved by the com­pa­ny. It includes set­ting world records for sin­gle bat­tery charge flight dis­tances (250.3km/155 miles) and car­ry­ing out a ground-break­ing for­ma­tion flight of three autonomous eVTOL air­craft.

Addi­tion­al­ly, AutoFlight’s unmanned car­go ver­sion, Car­ryAll, is soon to receive Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (TC) from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC), paving the way for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the pas­sen­ger mod­el.

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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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