Volocopter, UrbanV, Aena Collaborate “to Develop UAM Program for Spain”

Volo­copter is join­ing forces with ver­ti­port com­pa­ny, UrbanV, and air­port man­age­ment, Aena, to launch a pilot pro­gram to devel­op Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) for Spain, reports a press release.

The pro­gram con­sists of a fea­si­bil­i­ty study for the deploy­ment of UAM and a com­mer­cial Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (CONOPS) of a ver­ti­port at an air­port with­in the Aena flight net­work.

The tri­al will progress in two steps. 

The release explains, “The first two years will focus on a fea­si­bil­i­ty study of UAM use with­in the Aena net­work, iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial cus­tomers, ver­ti­port loca­tions and com­mer­cial routes, infra­struc­ture needs and pos­si­ble con­nec­tions with oth­er modes of trans­port.” 

It goes on, “The next step will be to eval­u­ate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of con­duct­ing flights test on Aena facil­i­ties (sub­ject to fund­ing, avail­abil­i­ty of resources, per­mits to fly etc.) in order to ascer­tain the CONOPS. Based on this study, the part­ner­ship aims to assess the next steps and poten­tial future lines of col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Span­ish UAM busi­ness sec­tor. Future work will be sub­ject to strict assess­ment of the tri­al results and the strate­gic align­ment of the par­ties.”

(Cred­it: UrbanV)

To cre­ate an effi­cient and sus­tain­able UAM ecosys­tem involves “under­stand­ing the mar­ket poten­tial, iden­ti­fy­ing pas­sen­ger-fre­quent­ed routes, plan­ning ver­ti­port loca­tions, and involv­ing addi­tion­al part­ners such as civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ties (CAA) and munic­i­pal­i­ties, among oth­ers,” con­tin­ues the release. “Aena, UrbanV, and Volo­copter have the exper­tise in respec­tive parts of the avi­a­tion indus­try to embark on the cre­ation of an effi­cient UAM ecosys­tem in Spain and beyond.” 

Chris­t­ian Bauer, CFO and CCO of Volo­copter, com­ment­ed, “This pilot pro­gram is anoth­er fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­stand real-world needs and use cas­es of eVTOL, and to strength­en our part­ner ecosys­tem with Aena and UrbanV.” 

Car­lo Tur­si, CEO of UrbanV, added, “We have the ambi­tion to become a major glob­al oper­a­tor of ver­ti­port net­works and to be glob­al pio­neers in estab­lish­ing some of the first AAM routes world­wide. We look for­ward to explor­ing along­side our part­ners the great poten­tial of intro­duc­ing Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty to the Span­ish mar­ket.”

Volo­copter and UrbanV have already col­lab­o­rat­ed for the 2024 Ital­ian UAM mar­ket launch in Rome and are now look­ing to strength­en their part­ner­ship in Spain. 

Mean­while, the coun­try is accel­er­at­ing its decar­bon­i­sa­tion efforts to tar­get net-zero by 2050, most­ly through elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, green hydro­gen and bio­fu­els. Aena is 10 years ahead of sched­ule by com­mit­ting to be net-zero by 2040.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.volocopter.com/en

https://urbanv.com/en/

https://www.aena.es/en/airlines/airports-and-destinations/our-airports.html

(Top image: Volo­copter)

For the lat­est news, insights and con­tent regard­ing the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, please join the fol­low­ing eVTOL Insights chan­nels: What­sApp, Sig­nal, Face­book, Insta­gram, Spo­ti­fy, Apple Pod­casts, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.