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Middle East: AutoFlight “Focuses on UAE Deployment”

While U.S eVTOL com­pa­nies like Archer and Joby Avi­a­tion have been gain­ing plau­dits for their recent busi­ness suc­cess­es in the Mid­dle East, com­pe­ti­tion from Chi­na is not far behind.

Back in ear­ly May, Chi­na-based Aut­oFlight, com­plet­ed its maid­en flight in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE) with its car­go air­craft, Car­ryAll, from the city of Al Ain, while set­ting a new record for its two-met­ric ton eVTOL in the Mid­dle East, reports ecns.cn/business

With approval from the Gen­er­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (GCAA) of the UAE, the air­craft accom­plished its first flight cov­er­ing a dis­tance of 123 kilo­me­tres. It main­tained an endurance of 41 min­utes on a sin­gle charge, with 44 per­cent of bat­tery capac­i­ty remain­ing upon land­ing. The suc­cess­ful jour­ney under­scores the safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy in a hot desert envi­ron­ment. 

The air­craft obtained Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (TC) from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC) in March, mak­ing it the world’s first eVTOL air­craft weigh­ing over one ton to be award­ed such mer­it. 

The Car­ryAll Tak­ing Off From the City of Al Ain, UAE

The Mid­dle East region, apart from Chi­na, is, per­haps, the most impor­tant mar­ket for Aut­oFlight. The so-called “low-alti­tude econ­o­my” is viewed as an unex­plored mar­ket with huge domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al poten­tial and the Mid­dle East is lead­ing the charge. Car­ry­ing car­go freight in the short term, could be viewed as more eco­nom­i­cal­ly prof­itable than car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers, as well as eas­i­er to achieve.

Xie Jia, Senior VP of Aut­oFlight, told the Glob­al Times news­pa­per that Chi­nese com­pa­nies are tak­ing the lead in some core tech­ni­cal fields. He remarked, “Chi­na’s com­plete sup­ply chain and oper­at­ing expe­ri­ence in the new-ener­gy vehi­cle field is accel­er­at­ing the devel­op­ment of eVTOLs and the low-alti­tude econ­o­my, and the nation’s huge con­sump­tion mar­ket has pro­vid­ed enter­pris­es with a pos­i­tive envi­ron­ment of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.”

China’s ‘2024 Gov­ern­ment Work Report’ stat­ed that devel­op­ment of the low-alti­tude econ­o­my is one of the new growth areas. Local gov­ern­ments in many Chi­nese cities have tak­en mea­sures to estab­lish test­ing sites and routes for relat­ed air­craft and tech­nolo­gies.

Mean­while, EHang recent­ly held a demon­stra­tion flight with pas­sen­gers via its EH216‑S air­craft in the cap­i­tal city of UAE, Abu Dhabi, mark­ing the first of its kind in the Mid­dle East.

The autonomous craft car­ried a pas­sen­ger, fol­low­ing its debut “unmanned demo flight” at the DRIFTx event on April 25th, while the EH216‑F (for high-rise fire­fight­ing) and EH216‑L (for aer­i­al logis­tics) per­formed their debuts, show­cas­ing a diverse range of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) use sce­nar­ios.

The three AAVs flew over the Emi­rates Fal­cons Avi­a­tion Club in Al Ali, Abu Dhabi with approval from the UAE’s Gen­er­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (GCAA).  Mean­while, Mohamed Al Dha­heri, board mem­ber of Mul­ti Lev­el Group (MLG), EHang’s local strate­gic part­ner, enjoyed a ride on the EH216‑S.

These suc­cess­ful demos were watched and applaud­ed by esteemed guests includ­ing Emi­rati roy­al­ty, civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ties, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the media.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.autoflight.com/en

https://ehang.com

(Images: Aut­oFlight)

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