Airbus lays foundations for Urban Air Mobility in Germany with the Air Mobility Initiative

Air­bus has cre­at­ed the Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (AMI), which will set up a series of research projects aimed at mak­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty with­in and between cities in Ger­many a real­i­ty.

Sup­port­ed by the Free State of Bavaria and the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many, the projects are cen­tred around three main areas: eVTOL air­craft, unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment ser­vices and air­port and city inte­gra­tion, includ­ing ver­ti­ports.

Work on the indi­vid­ual AMI projects began in Jan­u­ary, with test flights of the demon­stra­tion project to be car­ried out in the region around Ingol­stadt, Ger­many. The ini­tia­tive is fund­ed with €17 mil­lion from the Free State of Bavaria and €24 mil­lion from the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Togeth­er with the indus­try’s own funds, this results in a total activ­i­ty of €86 mil­lion over a peri­od of three years.

Oth­er mem­bers of the AMI include the City of Inglostadt, Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Flugsicherung, Diehl Aero­space, Dronig, Munich Air­port, Red Cross and Telekom.

Markus May, Head of Oper­a­tions for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty at Air­bus, said: “In many parts of the world, eVTOLs will offer a whole new mobil­i­ty ser­vice in the near future.

“Air­bus and the AMI part­ners are aware that the intro­duc­tion of such a sys­tem requires the coop­er­a­tion of many play­ers with dif­fer­ent com­pe­tences. Our goal is to build a trans­port ser­vice that ben­e­fits soci­ety and this is what we are set­ting up here in Bavaria.”

In a first step, the AMI part­ners will address the tech­no­log­i­cal, infra­struc­tur­al, legal, and social pre­req­ui­sites for the future imple­men­ta­tion of advanced air trans­port. Sub­se­quent­ly, the knowl­edge gained will be car­ried through a demon­stra­tion project under real con­di­tions with eVTOL air­craft.

Air­bus is lead­ing the vehi­cle stream togeth­er with Diehl Aero­space, Uni­ver­si­ty of Stuttgart and oth­er part­ners. The UTM activ­i­ties will deal with the safe and effi­cient flight of vehi­cles on their routes in and out­side cities.

This area is being advanced togeth­er with Droniq, Air­bus, f.u.n.k.e. Avion­ics, Sky­Five, BrigkAir, DFS, Telekom, Uni­ver­si­ties from Munich and Ham­burg and oth­er part­ners.

Through the ver­ti­port activ­i­ties, AMI will work on take-off and land­ing sites for the air­craft as well as their inte­gra­tion into air­ports and cities. Munich Air­port, Deutsche Bahn, Bauhaus Luft­fahrt, Air­port Nürn­berg, Uni­ver­si­ties of Ingol­stadt and Munich are respon­si­ble for this top­ic.