Airbus completes first autonomous flight of its CityAirbus demonstrator

Air­bus’ CityAir­bus eVTOL demon­stra­tor has com­plet­ed its first ful­ly auto­mat­ic flight, two weeks after com­plet­ing its first pub­lic flight demo in the pres­ence Bavar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Markus Soder.

Although the demo on 20th July was a rou­tine flight for Air­bus, this lat­est test rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the aero­space giant. In a video post­ed on Air­bus Heli­copters’ LinkedIn page, the video shows Air­bus staff — wear­ing face masks because of cur­rent Covid-19 restric­tions — using two but­tons to lift the CityAir­bus in the air, before land­ing it back down on the ground.

Speak­ing about the lat­est demon­stra­tion, Mar­ius Bebe­sel of Air­bus said: “It is a great day for the CityAir­bus. We had an auto­mat­ic take-off of the air­craft, the sta­bil­i­sa­tion in the air, and of course an auto­mat­ic land­ing of it. Every­thing went per­fect so we are very hap­py. This was a great achieve­ment for us.”

Bebe­sel added the CityAir­bus will be moved to Manch­ing from Air­bus Heli­copters’ Donauwörth base at the end of this month, where it will under­go fur­ther exten­sive flight test­ing at high­er speeds.

CityAir­bus is an all-elec­tric, four-seat, mul­ti­copter vehi­cle demon­stra­tor that focus­es on advanc­ing remote­ly pilot­ed elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) flight. The CityAir­bus full-scale demon­stra­tor con­duct­ed its first take-off in May 2019.

Ear­li­er this year, an Air­bus spokesper­son said the com­pa­ny remains com­mit­ted to its eVTOL pro­gramme, say­ing that it ‘con­sid­ers new forms of air trans­port such as urban air mobil­i­ty as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op key tech­nolo­gies for the future of VTOL plat­forms, includ­ing elec­tric flight and auton­o­my’.