BETA Technologies: “Dark Horse of the Middle East AAM Revolution”

While Joby, Archer and EHang have attract­ed all the recent fly­ing taxi plau­dits for their busi­ness suc­cess­es in the Mid­dle East, anoth­er U.S com­pa­ny is mak­ing trac­tion, but more under the radar.

Back in March 2023, BETA Tech­nolo­gies sig­nalled their intent of mak­ing air­waves in the region after col­lab­o­rat­ing with Unit­ed Postal Ser­vices (UPS), to tri­al eVTOLs in the UAE, assist­ed by a license grant­ed from the coun­try. 

This was signed by H.E. Abdul­la Bin Touq Al Mar­ri, Min­is­ter of Econ­o­my and Chair­man of the Gen­er­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, Bala Sub­ra­man­ian and Blain New­ton, COO at BETA. 

UPS views the AAM rev­o­lu­tion as:-

: A fast, cheap­er and more effi­cient way of deliv­er­ing small pack­age loads.

: Reduc­ing air­craft emis­sions.

: Cut­ting time-in-tran­sit.

: Sav­ing on oper­at­ing costs.

Lau­ra Lane

Lau­ra Lane, UPS EVP & Chief Cor­po­rate Affairs and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Offi­cer, then remarked, “We’re accel­er­at­ing our jour­ney to decar­bonise the future of flight and these air­craft will help us get there.”

She con­tin­ued, “As a com­pa­ny, we’ve made a com­mit­ment to 100 per­cent car­bon neu­tral­i­ty by 2050. And we’ve set clear goals to get there such as sourc­ing 30 per­cent of avi­a­tion fuel from sus­tain­able sources by 2035.”

Bala Sub­ra­man­ian, UPS EVP & Chief Dig­i­tal and Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, added, “These incred­i­ble air­craft serve as a foun­da­tion for future solu­tions to reduce emis­sions in our air and ground oper­a­tions. And with the sup­port from the UAE gov­ern­ment, we’re excit­ed to focus on inno­va­tions that meet the needs of our busi­ness, our cus­tomers and the envi­ron­ment.” 

In 2021, UPS Flight For­ward announced its inten­tion to pur­chase 10 eVTOL air­craft from BETA to aug­ment its air ser­vice with an option to acquire a fur­ther 140. These craft will take off and land on prop­er­ty at UPS facil­i­ties.

UPS to pur­chase 10 eVTOL air­craft from Beta Tech­nolo­gies for its air ser­vice fleet, includes option to buy up to 150

Mean­while, the com­pa­ny’s intent to reach car­bon neu­tral­i­ty by 2050 is impres­sive. Already, its glob­al fleet includes over 15,600 alter­na­tive fuel and advanced tech­nol­o­gy vehi­cles; close to 1,000 elec­tric and plu­g­in hybrid elec­tric ones on the road; while it is com­mit­ted to achiev­ing 40 per­cent alter­na­tive fuel in ground oper­a­tions by next year and sourc­ing 30 per­cent of avi­a­tion fuel from sus­tain­able sources by 2035.

Bala Sub­ra­man­ian

In fact, the company’s ded­i­ca­tion to help off­set car­bon knows no bounds after pledg­ing to plant 50 mil­lion trees by 2030, in addi­tion to sup­port­ing research and devel­op­ment efforts to fos­ter green inno­va­tions in the trans­porta­tion and logis­tics sec­tor.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.beta.team/

(Top image: BETA Tech­nolo­gies)

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