AIR Reveals First Production-Ready eVTOL Aircraft As Company Begins Commercial Rollout

AIR has unveiled its pro­duc­tion mod­el eVTOL air­craft, mark­ing the company’s tran­si­tion from air­craft devel­op­ment to com­mer­cial-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing and deliv­er­ies.

The com­plet­ed pro­duc­tion mod­el fol­lows the pro­to­type air­craft deliv­ered to the launch cus­tomer in Q4 2023 and advances AIR’s mis­sion to sup­port com­mer­cial car­go oper­a­tions and strength­en logis­ti­cal capa­bil­i­ties in con­test­ed envi­ron­ments.

Its first flight will take place in South­ern Israel before enter­ing oper­a­tional ser­vice. Sub­se­quent air­craft are sched­uled to be sent to AIR’s US-based oper­a­tion for demon­stra­tion efforts and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion advance­ment.

Rani Plaut, CEO and Co-founder of AIR, said: “This pro­duc­tion mod­el rep­re­sents years of engi­neer­ing refine­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­try lead­ers, stake­hold­ers, and reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies. We’ve moved beyond proof of con­cept to proven per­for­mance and com­mer­cial deploy­ment, sup­port­ed by vital part­ner­ships. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to deliv­er on the promise of trans­form­ing how car­go moves around the world.”

Draw­ing from near­ly two years of oper­a­tional deploy­ment with AIR’s launch cus­tomer, the new pro­duc­tion air­craft was shaped using field insights.

Oper­a­tional activ­i­ties includ­ed sus­tained Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) mis­sions, remote resup­ply in chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ments, inte­gra­tion with ground ele­ments, and addi­tion­al mis­sion pro­files. These field-proven mile­stones demon­strate how eVTOL sys­tems are tran­si­tion­ing from exper­i­men­tal plat­forms to mis­sion-ready assets, under­scor­ing their prac­ti­cal val­ue and dri­ving adop­tion across sec­tors.

AIR’s new car­go pro­duc­tion mod­el reflects sub­stan­tial progress across AIR’s estab­lished Tier One part­ner ecosys­tem, fea­tur­ing an all-new air­frame devel­oped by auto­mo­tive man­u­fac­tur­er EDAG, advanced elec­tric motors, redun­dant com­mu­ni­ca­tion and nav­i­ga­tion equip­ment for GPS-denied areas, and a ful­ly updat­ed avion­ics suite.

Capa­ble of tak­ing off and land­ing ver­ti­cal­ly while car­ry­ing a 550lb pay­load, AIR’s new air­frame and next-gen­er­a­tion elec­tri­cal and avion­ics archi­tec­ture will sup­port fast-grow­ing uncrewed car­go appli­ca­tions, as well as the over­all emerg­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket.

These capa­bil­i­ties stem from delib­er­ate design choic­es that pri­or­i­tize both oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy and mis­sion flex­i­bil­i­ty. Enhance­ments to the design include opti­mized bat­tery inte­gra­tion and a larg­er car­go bay, along with fold­able wings and motor arms that enable com­pact stor­age, easy trans­port, and greater mis­sion ver­sa­til­i­ty.

The aircraft’s stream­lined body design and refined air­flow man­age­ment sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve both range and over­all flight effi­cien­cy. These improve­ments are cou­pled with an advanced flight con­trol sys­tem that pro­vides increased sta­bil­i­ty, respon­sive­ness, and redun­dan­cy.

This lat­est mile­stone fol­lows a series of achieve­ments from AIR, includ­ing issuance of its FAA air­wor­thi­ness cer­tifi­cate, a $23 mil­lion Series A fund­ing round, exten­sive night­time BVLOS uncrewed car­go oper­a­tions, and suc­cess­ful flight oper­a­tions across diverse mis­sion sce­nar­ios.

AIR’s uncrewed car­go air­craft has proven suc­cess­ful in real-world car­go deliv­ery mis­sions, high­light­ing its sta­tus as one of the most advanced eVTOL car­go air­craft cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion. In addi­tion to car­go air­craft deliv­er­ies, AIR also plans to begin ful­fill­ing more than 2,900 pre-orders for its pilot­ed, two-seater AIR ONE air­craft in the com­ing year, fol­low­ing LSA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Through real-world flight oper­a­tions, indus­tri­al part­ner­ships, and glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry col­lab­o­ra­tion, AIR says it is bring­ing to mar­ket scal­able, dual-use VTOL solu­tions that sup­port a wide range of appli­ca­tions, includ­ing com­mer­cial car­go logis­tics, emer­gency response, mede­vac sup­port and con­test­ed logis­tics.