Fiji Airways announces Purchase Interest for Odys Aviation’s hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft, to increase regional connectivity across the Pacific

Odys Avi­a­tion has signed an Expres­sion of Inter­est let­ter with Fiji Air­ways, which will use Odys’ hybrid VTOL car­go air­craft — known as ‘Laila’ as part of its pilot pro­grams from next year.

Designed in mul­ti­ple con­fig­u­ra­tions for car­go and with a range of up to 400 miles, ‘Laila’ will con­nect all of Fiji’s 330 islands. Flights oper­at­ed via these air­craft will pro­vide a low-car­bon air car­go alter­na­tive for routes across the South Pacif­ic and open up new emer­gency med­ical routes that have, until now, been inac­ces­si­ble because of infra­struc­ture chal­lenges.

Addi­tion­al­ly, oper­at­ing Odys’ ‘Laila’ air­craft will allow Fiji Air­ways to expand its com­mer­cial land­scape and open up con­tracts with logis­tics and gov­ern­ment agen­cies to sup­port NGO oper­a­tions across the region.

Andre Viljoen, CEO of Fiji Air­ways, said: “There’s no doubt that the era of sus­tain­able avi­a­tion is upon us and through our part­ner­ship with Odys Avi­a­tion, Fiji Air­ways is strength­en­ing its focus on reduc­ing avi­a­tion emis­sions and defin­ing a roadmap to serve the next gen­er­a­tion of trav­el­ers.

“This part­ner­ship will do more than just expand Fiji Air­ways’ com­mer­cial oper­a­tions for today; it will dri­ve our invest­ment in the future of trav­el and lifestyle for the peo­ple of Fiji as well.”

Odys Avi­a­tion designs, devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures sus­tain­able, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced VTOL air­craft that solve glob­al chal­lenges for com­mer­cial air­lines and pri­vate oper­a­tors.

The com­pa­ny is pio­neer­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of VTOL air­craft which use hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems to deliv­er the opti­mal bal­ance between per­for­mance and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

This lat­est announce­ment with Fiji Air­ways fol­lows Odys Avi­a­tion’s recent announce­ment of a part­ner­ship with Hon­ey­well, where the two com­pa­nies will col­lab­o­rate on the design of new Ground Con­trol Sta­tions to sup­port the roll­out of Odys Aviation’s hybrid VTOL air­craft in the Pacif­ic.

James Dor­ris, CEO and Co-Founder of Odys Avi­a­tion, said: “Our phi­los­o­phy at Odys is to work in part­ner­ship with our cus­tomers and the regions in which they oper­ate to deliv­er val­ue beyond just air­craft.

“We’re thrilled to announce this EOI as the start of our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Fiji Air­ways and we’re look­ing for­ward to work­ing with their team, the local author­i­ties and the peo­ple of Fiji to dri­ve the tran­si­tion to sus­tain­able avi­a­tion, and to real­ize the ben­e­fits of a more con­nect­ed ecosys­tem across the region.”

Found­ed in 1951, the Fiji Air­ways air­line group com­pris­es Fiji Air­ways, Fiji’s inter­na­tion­al air­line, and its whol­ly-owned domes­tic and region­al sub­sidiary, Fiji Link.

From its hubs at Nadi and Suva Inter­na­tion­al Air­ports, Fiji Air­ways and Fiji Link serve 108 des­ti­na­tions in over 15 coun­tries. Des­ti­na­tions include Fiji, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, the US, Cana­da, the UK, Hong Kong (SAR Chi­na), Sin­ga­pore, India, Japan, Chi­na, Samoa, Ton­ga, Tuvalu, Kiri­bati, Van­u­atu, Solomon Islands and New Cale­do­nia.