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“Supernal Sign Two Partnership Agreements with Clay Lacy and Blade at Las Vegas NBAA-BACE 2024”

U.S‑based Super­nal, a lead­ing eVTOL devel­op­er and part of the Hyundai Motor Group, has been busy today sign­ing two dif­fer­ent part­ner­ship agree­ments to inte­grate its oper­a­tional plans with­in Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) net­works and fleet oper­a­tions, as well as exist­ing air­port infra­struc­ture, reports two press releas­es.

First off is Clay Lacy Avi­a­tion, a lead­ing U.S pri­vate jet ser­vices and air­craft main­te­nance com­pa­ny. The col­lab­o­ra­tion was announced today at the Las Vegas Nation­al Busi­ness Avi­a­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NBAA) Con­ven­tion and Exhi­bi­tion (BACE) event (Octo­ber 22nd-24th). 

This pre­pares the way for Clay Lacy’s fixed-base oper­a­tor (FBO) loca­tions for eVTOL oper­a­tions and her­alds Supernal’s first offi­cial FBO part­ner­ship, to ben­e­fit future oper­a­tors of the company’s eVTOL air­craft.

It is a five-year col­lab­o­ra­tion, where the two com­pa­nies “will devel­op end-to-end oper­a­tional plans for inte­grat­ing AAM into exist­ing air­port infra­struc­ture, with a focus on devel­op­ing stan­dards and pro­ce­dures for ground han­dling, MRO and bat­tery man­age­ment,” explains the release. Adding, “Super­nal will also sup­port Clay Lacy’s work to inte­grate suf­fi­cient pow­er and charg­ing infra­struc­ture for elec­tric avi­a­tion.” 

Ini­tial­ly, the part­ner­ship is to focus on two of Clay Lacy’s FBO loca­tions:- 

: SNA (Orange Coun­ty). 

: VNY (Van Nuys).

This aligns with Supernal’s South­ern Cal­i­for­nia launch plans. In fol­low­ing phas­es, the com­pa­nies “will apply their best prac­tices and learn­ings to pre­pare Clay Lacy’s broad­er FBO net­work for AAM,” con­tin­ues the release.  

Diana Coop­er, Supernal’s Chief Part­ner­ships and Pol­i­cy Offi­cer, com­ment­ed, “Clay Lacy’s state-of-the-art facil­i­ties, award-win­ning cus­tomer ser­vice and com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty make them an ide­al part­ner. Avail­abil­i­ty of infra­struc­ture will be crit­i­cal to scal­ing the AAM indus­try, and this col­lab­o­ra­tion is the lat­est step in ensur­ing the ecosys­tem is thought­ful­ly designed for future com­mer­cial eVTOL oper­a­tors.”

Super­nal plans to deliv­er its first all elec­tric-pow­ered air­craft to oper­a­tors in 2028. It will cruise at 120 miles-per-hour with an ini­tial range of 60 miles.

Scott Cut­shall, Pres­i­dent of Real Estate and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty at Clay Lacy, remarked, “Our com­pa­ny has a 57-year his­to­ry of firsts in the avi­a­tion indus­try, and we are com­mit­ted to sup­port the launch of sus­tain­able, inno­v­a­tive solu­tions such as these from Super­nal.”

Clay Lacy is the first FBO in the world accred­it­ed under the Nation­al Busi­ness Avi­a­tion Association’s Sus­tain­able Flight Devel­opment pro­gram. The com­pa­ny is exhibit­ing at the NBAA-BACE and can be found at booth 3801.

Blade Urban Mobil­i­ty is the sec­ond signed part­ner­ship, also announced at the open­ing day of the 2024 NBAA-BACE event. This agree­ment is to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties to devel­op AAM net­works and fleet oper­a­tions, includ­ing study­ing var­ied use cas­es in mar­kets of shared inter­est. 

As part of a three-year deal, the two com­pa­nies are to lever­age each other’s exper­tise “in avi­a­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and infra­struc­ture access to fur­ther devel­op the AAM sec­tor and exchange knowl­edge about the com­pa­nies’ respec­tive prod­ucts, ser­vices and capa­bil­i­ties,” explains the release. 

Specif­i­cal­ly, Super­nal is “to pro­vide insights on tech­no­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional nuances to sup­port the devel­op­ment of Blade’s future AAM ser­vice offer­ings,” con­tin­ues the release. “While Blade and its oper­a­tor part­ners will pro­vide Super­nal with feed­back on air­craft design and safe­ty, upgrade­abil­i­ty, pas­sen­ger com­fort and flex­i­bil­i­ty for var­i­ous oper­at­ing mar­kets.” 

David Rot­tblatt, Senior Direc­tor of Strat­e­gy and Com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion at Super­nal, com­ment­ed, “As the com­pa­ny pre­pares to finalise our eVTOL look, it is crit­i­cal we col­lab­o­rate with expe­ri­enced com­mer­cial part­ners like Blade to ensure our cab­in fea­tures align with pas­sen­ger expec­ta­tions for com­fort, safe­ty and effi­cien­cy in the next gen­er­a­tion of inter-city mobil­i­ty.”

He con­tin­ued, “Our part­ner­ship under­scores how the AAM indus­try has evolved. The dia­logue is no longer about the fea­si­bil­i­ty of eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy, but rather how it can be opti­mised to suit exist­ing com­mer­cial plat­forms and oper­a­tors.”

The two com­pa­nies will col­lab­o­rate on sce­nario plan­ning using hypo­thet­i­cal routes and net­works in New York City to sup­port air taxi, organ trans­plant trans­porta­tion and oth­er use cas­es. They will also work togeth­er to iden­ti­fy advan­ta­geous com­mer­cial arrange­ments in geo­gra­phies of mutu­al inter­est, includ­ing South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, using Supernal’s eVTOL vehi­cle and Blade’s aggre­ga­tion plat­forms as an air char­ter bro­ker. 

Melis­sa Tomkiel, Pres­i­dent and Gen­er­al Coun­sel at Blade , remarked, “By com­bin­ing Blade’s exper­tise with Supernal’s for­ward-think­ing inno­va­tions, this part­ner­ship is poised to accel­er­ate Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty devel­op­ment and enable qui­et, safe and emis­sion-free trans­porta­tion.”

Atten­dees at 2024 NBAA-BACE can learn more about Supernal’s eVTOL S‑A2 con­cept air­craft through a vir­tu­al real­i­ty expe­ri­ence in Blade’s Lounge at the Hen­der­son Exec­u­tive Air­port. Click here for more infor­ma­tion about Supernal’s pres­ence and here to book Blade shut­tle flights dur­ing the show. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.supernal.aero

https://www.claylacy.com/

https://www.blade.com

(Images: Super­nal)

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