Airbus partners with ITA Airways to create urban air mobility services in Italy using eVTOL aircraft

Air­bus and ITA Air­ways have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing to col­lab­o­rate on urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) in Italy. The two com­pa­nies will explore the cre­ation of tai­lored UAM ser­vices, by iden­ti­fy­ing strate­gic use cas­es for emis­sion-free mobil­i­ty solu­tions.

The agree­ment fore­sees a joint approach toward local mobil­i­ty stake­hold­ers in order to onboard addi­tion­al part­ners for the safe and sus­tain­able launch of oper­a­tions with the CityAir­bus NextGen eVTOL air­craft, which is cur­rent­ly in devel­op­ment.

The par­ties also agree to iden­ti­fy pilot cas­es with the goal of secur­ing pub­lic accep­tance of UAM by demon­strat­ing the added val­ue that it can bring to com­mu­ni­ties.

Alfre­do Altavil­la, Chair­man of ITA Air­ways, said: “The part­ner­ship between ITA Air­ways and Air­bus start­ed with the evo­lu­tion toward more mod­ern, more com­fort­able and envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly com­mer­cial air­craft, equipped with cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies. With this agree­ment, our part­ner­ship expands to the seg­ment of urban air mobil­i­ty for a wider, cus­tomer-cen­tric, inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able offer for our cus­tomers.”  

CityAir­bus NextGen is a ful­ly elec­tric vehi­cle equipped with fixed wings, a V‑shaped tail, and eight elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered pro­pellers as part of its unique­ly designed dis­trib­uted propul­sion sys­tem. It is designed to car­ry up to four pas­sen­gers — includ­ing a pilot — in zero-emis­sion flights for mul­ti­ple appli­ca­tions.

CityAir­bus NextGen is being devel­oped to fly with a 80 km oper­a­tional range and to reach a cruise speed of 120 km/h, mak­ing it per­fect­ly suit­ed for a vari­ety of mis­sions.

Guil­laume Fau­ry, CEO of Air­bus, said: “This agree­ment is tes­ti­mo­ny to the strong rela­tion­ship between Air­bus and ITA Air­ways. It is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to lever­age our shared ambi­tion – pio­neer­ing sus­tain­able aero­space –  and advance new air mobil­i­ty solu­tions for zero-emis­sion ver­ti­cal flight in sup­port of our cities and com­mu­ni­ties lat­er this decade.”

ITA Air­ways is the Ital­ian flag car­ri­er air­line. It was cre­at­ed in 2021, with sus­tain­abil­i­ty as one of the fun­da­men­tal pil­lars of its busi­ness plan. The com­pa­ny has shown a keen inter­est in inno­v­a­tive projects to decar­bonise avi­a­tion, such as the devel­op­ment of urban air mobil­i­ty through eVTOLs.

ITA Air­ways recent­ly direct­ly pur­chased 28 air­craft from the man­u­fac­tur­er, includ­ing sev­en A220s, 11 A320neos and 10 A330neos. The A350 will also join the company’s fleet this sum­mer.

Since 2014, Air­bus has been 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 a UAM 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.