Middle East: Interview with FlyNow co-Founder, Yvonne Winter 

The Mid­dle East is embrac­ing the nascent Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try with  flour­ish and gus­to, deter­mined to become the pio­neer­ing region for this green avi­a­tion mar­ket. The Aus­tria-based eVTOL com­pa­ny, Fly­Now, is gain­ing par­tic­u­lar inter­est with its unique-con­fig­u­rat­ed eCopter for autonomous per­son­al flight. 

There are plans for thou­sands of Fly­Now eCopters to trans­port the pub­lic around the Riyadh World Expo in 2030. Mean­while, it’s aimed for these futur­is­tic-look­ing craft to be fly­ing over Sau­di Ara­bia and the UAE as soon as 2027 on pre-defined aer­i­al routes, touch­ing down on rooftop ver­ti­ports along the way.

Mid­dle East: “Thou­sands of Fly­Now e‑Copters to Trans­port Pub­lic Around Riyadh Expo 2030”

Ben Hub­bard, a jour­nal­ist for Zag Dai­ly, recent­ly inter­viewed Fly­Now co-Founder, Yvonne Win­ter.

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What makes your eVTOL dif­fer­ent from all the rest?

Do you know NASA’s Inge­nu­ity Heli­copter which made his­to­ry by achiev­ing the first pow­ered flight on Mars? This con­fig­u­ra­tion is very unique as it has a coax­i­al-rotor sys­tem with a tilt­ing head mech­a­nism. This is the most effi­cient sys­tem out there and we share the same con­fig­u­ra­tion with our eCopter. We also don’t need a tail rotor which nor­mal heli­copters have and this typ­i­cal­ly takes 30 per­cent off the effi­cien­cy. 

Will the eCopter main­ly be used as an air taxi ser­vice? 

This will be one of the main use cas­es, yes. We chose to design sin­gle and twin seater ver­sions because if you use an air taxi to com­mute to your work in the morn­ing, for exam­ple, you don’t want to wait until three or four oth­er guests are there for the ride. If you order an Uber or a taxi, you usu­al­ly go by your­self or with a part­ner and if there are four peo­ple, you can take two twin seat eCopters. Our price will then match that of an Uber ride e.g. in Munich. It will have a 30 minute flight time from its 50 kilo­me­tre range, plus an extra 25 kilo­me­tres for safe­ty rea­sons. The vehicle’s foot­print is also only sev­en square metres, which means we can land almost any­where, on any rooftop, on any moun­tain, or any dis­as­ter area. The use case we start with is car­go and by auto­mat­i­cal­ly charg­ing, load­ing and unload­ing as well as auto­mat­i­cal­ly fly­ing, we bring sig­nif­i­cant val­ue for logis­tic appli­ca­tions and offer a seam­less inte­gra­tion into exist­ing chains. A fur­ther advan­tage is that the noise lev­el of only 55 db(A) in an alti­tude of 150 metres which is the sound lev­el of a dish­wash­er. 

I under­stand that there will be no pilot on board and the flight will be auto­mat­ed. How will this work in prac­tice?

Yes, the eCopter will oper­ate on pre-pro­grammed, auto-pilot­ed routes or Sky­Roads. Air traf­fic con­trol, mean­ing the gov­ern­ment, will give a ded­i­cat­ed tun­nel in the sky where the vehi­cle needs to stay. When it takes off, air traf­fic con­trol will observe the flight and it will also be con­trolled by the ground sta­tion, which is Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment. Third­ly, the vehi­cle is pre-pro­grammed on its route so even if the con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the ground sta­tion fails, it con­tin­ues fly­ing on the ded­i­cat­ed route.

“Small eVTOL Copters Could Be Fly­ing Pas­sen­gers Around UAE and Sau­di Ara­bia with­in a Few Years”

Where do you plan to launch first and can you explain what the Sky Alliance is?  

We are run­ning a large pilot pro­gram next year in Sau­di Ara­bia with all our part­ners. Fly­Now found­ed the Sky Alliance For Auto­mat­ed Air Mobil­i­ty (SALAAM) which is an inter­na­tion­al asso­ci­a­tion with all the nec­es­sary stake­hold­ers to deliv­er a turnkey solu­tion. 

We always face ques­tions from gov­ern­ment bod­ies ask­ing how do we inte­grate this into the air­space? So, we have spent a long time iden­ti­fy­ing the right part­ners cov­er­ing air traf­fic man­age­ment, weath­er data, dig­i­tal twin, insur­ance, ver­ti­ports and so on, so that we can joint­ly deliv­er a turnkey-solu­tion. As part of this we have signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with the Nation­al Indus­tri­al Devel­op­ment Cen­ter and Gen­er­al Author­i­ty of Civ­il Avi­a­tion in Sau­di Ara­bia to ini­ti­ate a com­pre­hen­sive pilot project. Next year, we start with the set­up of the assem­bly plant and we will start the seri­ous pro­duc­tion of the car­go ver­sion in 2027 with a pro­duc­tion of 3,000 units in the first year. We will begin the first pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion at the end of 2028 and have a roll out plan of a four dig­it num­ber of vehi­cles in Riyadh for Expo 2030.

What do you think is the main chal­lenge that this indus­try needs to over­come?

The first chal­lenge is to have vehi­cles that are afford­able and avail­able for the broad pub­lic because oth­er­wise the accep­tance is not there. If it’s only a toy for the super rich, most peo­ple will be against urban air mobil­i­ty. The sec­ond point is the inte­gra­tion into the air­space. We need to have a sys­tem that is high­ly auto­mat­ed, safe and scal­able, oth­er­wise it is not fea­si­ble. Third, we need the infra­struc­ture, mean­ing ver­ti­ports, where you can land, as well as charg­ing sites and dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty. So, the whole set­up needs to be devel­oped.

INTERVIEW: Jur­gen Greil of Fly­Now Avi­a­tion gives a tech­ni­cal overview of company’s eVTOL fam­i­ly

Could you tell us one per­son you would like to spot­light that you feel is fast track­ing the devel­op­ment of UAM?

Dr. Samer Al-Jabari. He is the Exec­u­tive Chief Advi­sor Aero­space and Renew­able at the Nation­al Indus­tri­al Devel­op­ment Cen­tre which is part of the Min­istry of Indus­try in Sau­di Ara­bia. They are respon­si­ble for the align­ment of Vision 2030 through­out the dif­fer­ent min­istries, the coor­di­nat­ing body so to speak, and Dr. Samer knows how to turn a vision into real­i­ty. He’s got the tech­ni­cal knowl­edge as a trained aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer, has a long and deep expe­ri­ence in the coop­er­ate world, and now works for the gov­ern­ment. He is one of the view peo­ple we have engaged with who is capa­ble to real­ly val­i­date and judge the fea­si­bil­i­ty of dif­fer­ent eVTOL con­fig­u­ra­tions and tech­ni­cal appli­ca­tions. He helped me a lot to nav­i­gate the ecosys­tem in the King­dom of Sau­di Ara­bia and guid­ed the set up of the Sky Alliance. This has been a piv­otal step, because imple­ment­ing a new means of trans­port requires col­lab­o­ra­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.flynow-aviation.com/

(News Source: https://zagdaily.com/)

(Top image: Yvonne Winter/credit — Fly­Now)

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