Airbus and Munich Airport International to develop AAM solutions globally

Air­bus and Munich Air­port Inter­na­tion­al (MAI) have signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing at ILA Berlin Air Show to start mar­ket­ing turnkey solu­tions to cities and regions inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) ecosys­tems glob­al­ly.

Air­bus is devel­op­ing its CityAir­bus NextGen eVTOL air­craft, along with key sup­port and ser­vices, while MAI is offer­ing ground infra­struc­ture ser­vices and solu­tions.

MAI exec­u­tive VP of cor­po­rate devel­op­ment Ivonne Kuger said: “We are already col­lab­o­rat­ing with Air­bus on the Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive recent­ly launched in Munich, and now we are expand­ing that part­ner­ship glob­al­ly to sup­port select cities and regions around the world.

“As Europe’s first five-star air­port Munich Air­port has always been at the fore­front of inno­va­tion and it is cru­cial for air­ports to be active­ly involved in devel­op­ing and paving the way for this new form of trans­port.”

Air­bus head of UAM part­ner­ships and strat­e­gy exe­cu­tion Balk­iz Sar­i­han added: “The devel­op­ment of the mar­ket, indus­try, and the ulti­mate ser­vice of AAM requires a holis­tic view.

“In addi­tion to our decades of vehi­cle and tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and sup­port, we are active­ly build­ing work­ing ecosys­tems with our part­ners, and we are sure that our part­ner­ship with Munich Air­port will be a key cat­a­lyst for accel­er­at­ing the devel­op­ment of the AAM ecosys­tems world­wide.”

The suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion of the dif­fer­ent AAM ele­ments requires a strong coop­er­a­tion between glob­al and local stake­hold­ers com­bin­ing key com­pe­ten­cies. The objec­tive is to cre­ate com­plete­ly new ecosys­tems that ensure a safe and seam­less inte­gra­tion of eVTOL solu­tions with oth­er means of mobil­i­ty bring­ing added val­ue to cities and com­mu­ni­ties.

Air­bus has been one of the pio­neers in explor­ing how elec­tric propul­sion can help dri­ve the devel­op­ment of new kinds of aer­i­al vehi­cles. In Sep­tem­ber 2021, the Com­pa­ny unveiled its ful­ly elec­tric eVTOL pro­to­type, CityAir­bus NextGen.

Air­bus is devel­op­ing an AAM solu­tion with eVTOLs not only to offer a new mobil­i­ty ser­vice but also as an impor­tant step in its quest to reduce emis­sions in avi­a­tion across its prod­uct range.

The com­pa­ny recent­ly announced the launch of the Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (AMI), a con­sor­tium of part­ners ded­i­cat­ed to the advance­ment of AAM in Bavaria and Ger­many to set up a series of research projects aimed at mak­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty between cities in Ger­many a real­i­ty.

The projects are cen­tred around three main areas: eVTOL air­craft, unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment ser­vices and air­port and city inte­gra­tion, includ­ing ver­ti­ports.

In Octo­ber 2021, MAI and Urban-Air Port col­lab­o­rat­ed in devel­op­ing air­craft ground infra­struc­ture and air­port oper­a­tions to facil­i­tate the ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing of elec­tric air taxis.