DUBAI AIRSHOW 2023: AutoFlight, Falcon Aviation Services Partner to “Thrust Forward eVTOL Industry in UAE and Beyond”

Aut­oFlight and Fal­con Avi­a­tion Ser­vices (FAS) have launched a pio­neer­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion aimed at “spear­head­ing the advance­ment of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and through­out the region”, declares a press release.

FAS is a lead­ing Busi­ness Avi­a­tion Ser­vices Oper­a­tor in the Mid­dle East and Africa region (MENA), and a key play­er in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE) government’s AAM strat­e­gy, while Aut­oFlight is a leader in the eVTOL indus­try. “These trail­blaz­ing com­pa­nies,”  says the release, “have offi­cial­ly marked their com­mit­ment with the sign­ing of a ground-break­ing Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing, pledg­ing to col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly forge an inno­v­a­tive AAM strat­e­gy across the region.”

For Fal­con, this comes a month after news the com­pa­ny had signed a pre­vi­ous MOU with eVTOL com­pa­ny, Archer Avi­a­tion, to oper­ate its fly­ing taxis across Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Mark Robert Hen­ning, MD of Aut­oFlight Europe, com­ment­ed, “Our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Fal­con Avi­a­tion Ser­vices is a major mile­stone in the advance­ment of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in the UAE and the broad­er MENA region. Togeth­er we take pride in being able to show­case the capa­bil­i­ties of our inno­v­a­tive Pros­per­i­ty pas­sen­ger eVTOL and car­go Car­ryAll to the Emi­rates.”

Pros­per­i­ty in Flight (Cred­it: Aut­oFlight)

Cap­tain Raman Oberoi, COO of Fal­con Avi­a­tion Ser­vices, added, “This part­ner­ship with Aut­oFlight aligns with our ded­i­ca­tion to deliv­er­ing an effec­tive and sus­tain­able new urban trans­porta­tion mode. Fal­con is lead­ing the way to launch this rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cept in the UAE and MENA region.”

Chi­na-based Aut­oFlight and its Pros­per­i­ty air­craft “employs a rotor tech­nol­o­gy for ver­ti­cal take­off and smooth­ly tran­si­tions into hor­i­zon­tal flight, akin to tra­di­tion­al air­planes,”  explains the release. “The air­craft is capa­ble of speeds in excess of 200kmh, over a range greater than 250km. Aut­oFlight is one of only a few eVTOL OEMs to have mas­tered the chal­leng­ing ‘tran­si­tion phase’ from ver­ti­cal to hor­i­zon­tal flight, clock­ing thou­sands of flight miles on mul­ti­ple iter­a­tions of their air­craft.”

Pros­per­i­ty was designed by Frank Stephen­son, the renowned design­er who rev­o­lu­tionised the Mini and the Fiat 500, and cre­at­ed icon­ic designs for Fer­rari, McLaren and Maserati, before “turn­ing his design tal­ents to the skies and the realm of fly­ing taxis.”

Aut­oFlight is the clos­est in devel­op­ment to eVTOL lead­ers Joby, Volo­copter and EHang. Pros­per­i­ty has been set­ting var­i­ous bench­marks over the past 12 months, includ­ing estab­lish­ing the world record of fly­ing 250.3km on a sin­gle bat­tery charge. In anoth­er mile­stone for the avi­a­tion indus­try, Aut­oFlight also recent­ly exe­cut­ed a world-first for­ma­tion flight of three autonomous eVTOL air­craft. 

Please Watch Video

“Pros­per­i­ty — The Design Sto­ry”

The  unmanned car­go ver­sion of Pros­per­i­ty named the Car­ryAll, is expect­ed to achieve pro­duc­tion and air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC) by ear­ly 2024, help­ing pave the way for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the pas­sen­ger mod­el. The car­go mod­el has two met­ric tons max­i­mum take­off weight (MTOW) and is designed to lift a 400kg pay­load up to 200km.

Mean­while, FAS pro­vides an exten­sive range of Oper­a­tional and Avi­a­tion Sup­port Ser­vices, includ­ing Heli­copter Sight­see­ing Tours from some of UAE’s most icon­ic des­ti­na­tions, such as Atlantis Hotel, The Palm and Abu Dhabi Ports. The com­pa­ny serves 70,000 sight­see­ing pas­sen­gers annu­al­ly and aims to dou­ble this num­ber with­in the next three years, so is in a prime posi­tion to  intro­duce the first eVTOL tourist, car­go and air-taxi flights in the region. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://autoflight.com/en/

www.falconaviation.ae

(Top image: Aut­oFlight)