FIA2024: Lilium, Skyports, Sea Milan Airports “to Launch Regional Air Mobility Network in Northern Italy” 

Lil­i­um, Sky­ports and Sea Milan Air­ports (SEA) have announced at the Farn­bor­ough Inter­na­tion­al Air­show (FIA), a sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) “to lay the ground­work for the devel­op­ment of a pas­sen­ger eVTOL net­work in the Lom­bardy region of north­ern Italy,” reports a press release.

This region is an impor­tant loca­tion as it’s home to near­ly a fifth of Italy’s pop­u­la­tion and attracts over 37 mil­lion vis­i­tors annu­al­ly.  Region­al Air Mobil­i­ty will com­ple­ment and inte­grate with the region’s exist­ing trans­port solu­tions “to pro­vide faster, low emis­sion trav­el between key loca­tions,” con­tin­ues the release.

The part­ners are to col­lab­o­rate by launch­ing a ver­ti­port net­work for the oper­a­tors of the Lil­i­um Jet as soon as 2027. SEA will con­tribute as major­i­ty share­hold­er, pro­vid­ing air­port man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ty and deep knowl­edge of the region’s avi­a­tion and infra­struc­ture ecosys­tem. Sky­ports is to pro­vide its exper­tise and expe­ri­ence in the devel­op­ment and inte­gra­tion of ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture. Lil­i­um offers its all-impor­tant eVTOL Jet.

The agree­ment will see the com­pa­nies devel­op mobil­i­ty routes which serve key loca­tions across Lom­bardy. The first route is to con­nect Milan Malpen­sa Air­port, the largest inter­na­tion­al air­port in north­ern Italy, that trans­port­ed over 26 mil­lion trav­ellers last year and Milan city cen­tre.

(Cred­it: Wiki Voy­age)

Sebastien Borel, CCO of Lil­i­um, com­ment­ed, “This part­ner­ship will help unlock new poten­tial for region­al air trans­port infra­struc­ture in North­ern Italy. It is to sup­port our vision of pio­neer­ing a new era of region­al air mobil­i­ty in Europe with the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of pre­mi­um tourist routes in the region.”

The project will facil­i­tate the fast and effi­cient move­ment of peo­ple and is to be instru­men­tal in deliv­er­ing some of the first pre­mi­um eVTOL flights with­in Europe.

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, remarked, “With sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from avi­a­tion and infra­struc­ture stake­hold­ers, includ­ing our investor, 2i Aero­por­ti, this part­ner­ship demon­strates Italy’s readi­ness to launch the next gen­er­a­tion of avi­a­tion.”

He added, “We’ve been work­ing with our part­ners at SEA for some time and we’re excit­ed to open the doors of our ver­ti­ports and see eVTOL air­craft take flight over Lom­bardy.”

A fun­da­men­tal enabling fac­tor for the entire project is the strong part­ner­ship with the Ital­ian Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty ENAC. The author­i­ty recent­ly pub­lished a com­pre­hen­sive nation­al rule­book, the first of its kind in Europe, for VTOL-capa­ble air­craft, posi­tion­ing Italy as a fron­trun­ner in the intro­duc­tion of Inno­v­a­tive Air Mobil­i­ty in Europe.

For the devel­op­ment and oper­a­tions of ver­ti­ports in Lom­bardy and Italy, SEA, Sky­ports and their share­hold­er 2i Aero­por­ti are in the process of estab­lish­ing a joint ven­ture com­pa­ny.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.lilium.com

www.skyports.net

milanairports.com/it

(Top image: Lil­i­um)

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