AutoFlight Collaborates with UI Helijet “to develop AAM services in South Korea”

Chi­na-based eVTOL devel­op­er, Aut­oFlight, announced recent­ly a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) agree­ment with South Kore­an heli­copter oper­a­tor, UI Heli­jet, to devel­op Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) oper­a­tions in South Korea, reports a press release.

Aut­oFlight has devel­oped the five-seat Pros­per­i­ty 1 eVTOL air­craft, which has a cruis­ing speed of 200 km/h and a flight range of 250 km on a sin­gle bat­tery charge. The com­pa­ny aims to gain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its pas­sen­ger eVTOL next year, where full-scale com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion will then fol­low.

In April, the com­pa­ny received Type Cer­tifi­cate for its two-ton-class car­go eVTOL from China’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (CAAC). Four months lat­er Aut­oFlight secured a large mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar invest­ment from For­tune Glob­al 500 bat­tery devel­op­er, CATL.

Dur­ing the sign­ing agree­ment, Kellen Xie, Senior VP of Aut­oFlight, com­ment­ed, “South Korea is one of the most proac­tive coun­tries in the urban and region­al air mobil­i­ty indus­try. We look for­ward to cre­at­ing both an inno­v­a­tive AAM and UAM (Urban Air Mobil­i­ty) ser­vice mod­el by col­lab­o­rat­ing with avi­a­tion expert, UI Heli­jet.” 

UI Heli­jet was found­ed in 1961 and is seen as a pio­neer­ing force with­in South Korea’s avi­a­tion indus­try. Its busi­ness is cen­tred with­in the heli­copter sec­tor.

Pros­per­i­ty fly­ing over Chi­na’s Yangtze Riv­er in August (cred­it: Aut­oFlight)

A com­pa­ny state­ment says, “Over the years, we have built exten­sive oper­a­tional exper­tise in pub­lic avi­a­tion ser­vices, includ­ing the oper­a­tion of air ambu­lance and wild­fire sur­veil­lance heli­copters. Addi­tion­al­ly, we man­age a 115,700 m² MRO cen­tre equipped for flight test­ing, air­craft main­te­nance, and over­hauls, pro­vid­ing a strong foun­da­tion for our expan­sion into the UAM and AAM indus­try.”

Gun Chang, CEO of UI Heli­jet, added, “Although, we are not direct­ly involved in AAM projects at the moment, no oth­er coun­try in this field is as proac­tive as the Kore­an gov­ern­ment. We hope to con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of this avi­a­tion sec­tor by par­tic­i­pat­ing in both gov­ern­ment-led UAM and AAM projects, util­is­ing UI Helijet’s exper­tise in air trans­port oper­a­tions, MRO, air­wor­thi­ness for for­eign air­craft, and pilot and main­te­nance tech­ni­cian train­ing.”

Both com­pa­nies aim to build a long-term part­ner­ship to joint­ly respond to the rapid evolv­ing aero­space mobil­i­ty indus­try by explor­ing ways to intro­duce the Pros­per­i­ty eVTOL air­craft into the South Kore­an mar­ket.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.autoflight.com

http://uihelijet.com/

(Top image: Kellen Xie, Senior VP of Aut­oFlight, Gun Chang, CEO of UI Heli­jet, sign­ing the part­ner­ship agree­ment)

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