AutoFlight Selected for Hong Kong’s Inaugural ‘Regulatory Sandbox X’ Flight Trials

Aut­oFlight has been select­ed for the inau­gur­al round of Hong Kong’s “Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box X” – a flag­ship ini­tia­tive to advance the city’s low-alti­tude econ­o­my and explore inno­v­a­tive appli­ca­tions.

Launched by the Trans­port and Logis­tics Bureau and sup­port­ed by Hong Kong’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Depart­ment, ‘Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box X’ takes an open, for­ward-look­ing approach to com­pli­ant test flights, sce­nario val­i­da­tion, and iter­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy upgrades for inno­v­a­tive unmanned air­craft. The aim is to pave the way for low‑carbon, high‑efficiency air mobil­i­ty.

Two of the four approved projects will be car­ried out using AutoFlight’s heavy-lift eVTOL air­craft, under­scor­ing the company’s R&D strength, exten­sive flight‑test expe­ri­ence and com­mer­cial readi­ness.

Aut­oFlight will work with part­ners includ­ing Chi­na Trav­el Ser­vice (Hong Kong) Auto­mo­bile Ser­vices Lim­it­ed and AECOM Lim­it­ed on route plan­ning, flight-para­me­ter cal­i­bra­tion and end-to-end flight val­i­da­tion. Togeth­er, these efforts will steadi­ly widen the scope of low-alti­tude com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions across the region.

Xie Jia, senior vice pres­i­dent of Aut­oFlight, not­ed that Aut­oFlight will use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to deep­en its invest­ment in core eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy and com­mer­cial deploy­ment, sup­port­ing Hong Kong’s emerg­ing low-alti­tude trans­port net­work.

Work­ing close­ly with the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Depart­ment and indus­try part­ners, the com­pa­ny aims to help scale up the Greater Bay Area’s low-alti­tude econ­o­my safe­ly and at com­mer­cial scale.

Fea­tured image: In Feb­ru­ary 2024, AutoFlight’s 2 ton eVTOL com­plet­ed a land­mark cross-sea flight between Shen­zhen and Zhuhai.