AirAsia orders 100 VX4 eVTOL aircraft from Avolon to create aerial ride-sharing platform in southeast Asia

AirA­sia has signed a non-bind­ing mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with Avolon to lease a min­i­mum of 100 VX4 eVTOL air­craft and devel­op an urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) plat­form in south­east Asia.

Avolon and AirA­sia will now form a work­ing group to pur­sue local cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, research poten­tial mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties and infra­struc­ture require­ments for UAM.

AirA­sia will also lever­age its suc­cess­ful trav­el and lifestyle mobile app, the AirA­sia Super App, to help sup­port and build an eVTOL ride-shar­ing plat­form with Avolon. By using the eVTOL air­craft, AirA­sia will be able to pro­vide advanced air mobil­i­ty to a whole new range of pas­sen­gers.

Dómh­nal Slat­tery, CEO of Avolon, said: “Tony Fer­nan­des is an avi­a­tion pio­neer who has built AirA­sia into one of the lead­ing air­lines in the world and has now also cre­at­ed South­east Asia’s fastest grow­ing Super App anchored on trav­el.

“We are delight­ed to part­ner with AirA­sia who share our vision of rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the future of air trav­el. We look for­ward to work­ing with Tony, and the AirA­sia team, on their eVTOL jour­ney. Togeth­er we will devel­op a ride-shar­ing plat­form and bring the zero-emis­sions VX4.”

In June 2021, Avolon ordered 500 VX4 eVTOL air­craft from Ver­ti­cal Aero­space in an order val­ued at USD $2 bil­lion.

Since announc­ing that order, Avolon placed 250 VX4 air­craft with Gol and Grupo Com­porte in Brazil, up to 100 air­craft with Japan Air­lines in Japan, and a min­i­mum of 100 air­craft with AirA­sia. As a result, Avolon has now placed up to 90 per cent of its ini­tial order book.

Tony Fer­nan­des, CEO of Cap­i­tal A, for­mer­ly AirA­sia Group, said: “Inno­va­tion has always been in our DNA and using tech­nol­o­gy to look at more effi­cient and sus­tain­able ways of doing things is a core focus across Cap­i­tal A.

“We are now much more than just an air­line with over 20 prod­ucts and ser­vices on our super app lever­ag­ing off each oth­er includ­ing flights, hotels, food, retail, deliv­ery, ride hail­ing and more. I am tru­ly excit­ed about this part­ner­ship between Avolon and AirA­sia and the poten­tial for zero-emis­sions ultra-short-haul air trav­el in South­east Asia.

“The dig­i­tal era is now. In the VX4, we have iden­ti­fied what we believe will be the eVTOL air­craft of choice and we are thrilled to be the launch air­line for the air­craft in South­east Asia.”

Stephen Fitz­patrick, CEO of Ver­ti­cal, added: “We are delight­ed that AirA­sia is the lat­est lead­ing air­line com­mit­ting to lease our zero oper­at­ing emis­sions VX4 air­craft. AirA­sia pro­vides many fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ties to trav­el around some of the most beau­ti­ful and diverse coun­tries in the world, and I am thrilled that we will be bring­ing zero emis­sions flight to peo­ple all across Asia.”