FIA2024: Saudi Arabia’s GACA and Lilium sign MoU on eVTOL regulation in the Kingdom

The Sau­di Ara­bi­an Gen­er­al Author­i­ty of Civ­il Avi­a­tion (GACA) and Lil­i­um have signed an agree­ment to devel­op and imple­ment the required reg­u­la­tions for eVTOL oper­a­tions in the King­dom of Sau­di Ara­bia, begin­ning in 2026.

Announc­ing the news yes­ter­day (Mon­day) on day one of this week’s Farn­bor­ough Air­show, the part­ner­ship will start by set­ting up a joint Work­ing Group prepar­ing the reg­u­la­tions in Sau­di Ara­bia for the intro­duc­tion of region­al elec­tric air mobil­i­ty.

Ded­i­cat­ed sub-work­ing groups for infra­struc­ture, air oper­a­tions, air­wor­thi­ness, and air­space inte­gra­tion, led by GACA and strong­ly sup­port­ed by Lil­i­um, are to joint­ly dis­cuss, accel­er­ate, devel­op, and imple­ment the nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry and pro­ce­dur­al frame­work.

His Excel­len­cy Abdu­laz­iz Al-Duailej, Pres­i­dent of GACA, said: “This agree­ment reflects GACA’s com­mit­ment to advanc­ing inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able air mobil­i­ty solu­tions for Sau­di Ara­bia, in sup­port of Vision 2030. By work­ing with glob­al advanced air mobil­i­ty com­pa­nies, we aim to estab­lish a robust reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that ensures the safe and effi­cient oper­a­tion of eVTOL air­craft.”

Sau­di Ara­bia has rec­og­nized the enor­mous growth poten­tial of eVTOL and intends to take a deci­sive step towards the intro­duc­tion of the new modes of trans­port into exist­ing traf­fic and air­space struc­tures by 2026 with the pub­lished Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) Roadmap.

Lil­i­um has already been in close con­tact with GACA in recent years and has sup­port­ed the devel­op­ment of the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and pro­ce­dures need­ed to safe­ly oper­ate eVTOL in Saudia Ara­bia.

Lil­i­um CEO Klaus Roewe, added: “We are very thank­ful that GACA has cho­sen Lil­i­um to devel­op and imple­ment the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for eVTOL in Sau­di Ara­bia. It acknowl­edges Lil­i­um’s knowhow in avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tion.

“Our goal is to joint­ly advance reg­u­la­to­ry and prac­ti­cal steps for suit­able frame­work con­di­tions for elec­tric avi­a­tion and our cus­tomers in Sau­di Ara­bia. Today’s MoU deliv­ers on one of the main ingre­di­ents required to suc­cess­ful­ly launch eVTOL oper­a­tions — a defin­i­tive path to all rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry cor­ner­stones.”

Lil­i­um has a wide knowl­edge of the reg­u­la­to­ry devel­op­ment, process­es, and rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion based on the par­tic­i­pa­tion in dif­fer­ent ICAO Work­ing Groups (such as ICAO AAM SG and ICAO VFIWG), EASA Work­ing Groups (such as RMT.230 includ­ing the active and dri­ving par­tic­i­pa­tion and con­tri­bu­tion to EASA PTS-VPT-DSN and EASA Part-IAM), EUROCAE Work­ing Groups, dis­cus­sions with the FAA and ANAC, and dif­fer­ent sim­i­lar nation­al approach­es in Europe.

Giv­en this back­ground, Lil­i­um will sup­port and col­lab­o­rate with GACA in the joint ded­i­cat­ed Work­ing Group for Sau­di Ara­bia.

The Work­ing Group will be the expert group that iden­ti­fies, address­es, and defines the action items which will be worked on for the imple­men­ta­tion of IAM in Sau­di Ara­bia in terms of reg­u­la­tion, leg­is­la­tion and pro­ce­dures.