Blade Acquires three UAM Companies to Create Europe’s largest Helicopter Passenger Service

Blade Air Mobil­i­ty is to acquire three urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tors in Europe — Monacair, Héli Sécu­rité and anoth­er heli­copter oper­a­tor in the South of France — which gen­er­at­ed an aggre­gate of €30 mil­lion in rev­enues while fly­ing approx­i­mate­ly 125,000 pas­sen­gers in 2019.

It will also devel­op brand­ed pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nals at mul­ti­ple air­ports and ver­ti­ports in France, Mona­co and Switzer­land, with char­ter rev­enues and flight hours approx­i­mate­ly 30% above the same peri­od in 2019, with strong post-pan­dem­ic recov­ery in trav­el to the region.

Monacair’s CEO Damien Maza­udi­er will join Blade Europe’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Sab­ri­na Bar­bera, and Blade Europe’s Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Anne-Pas­cale Gue­don, to over­see the tran­si­tion of pas­sen­ger busi­ness­es to Blade.

Blade CEO Rob Wiesen­thal said: “Blade has now amassed what we believe to be the most valu­able routes in the world, adding a for­mi­da­ble pres­ence in Europe to our exist­ing oper­a­tions across the greater New York area, Van­cou­ver and India.”

Monacair Co-Founder Mar­co Casir­aghi said: “With Monacair’s strong oper­at­ing his­to­ry, Blade’s pow­er­ful glob­al plat­form, tech­nol­o­gy and brand is an unbeat­able com­bi­na­tion that will boost urban air mobil­i­ty in Europe.

“We look for­ward to the Euro­pean launch of Blade’s com­mer­cial ser­vices at the Mona­co Grand Prix this month, now avail­able for pur­chase on the Blade app for $220 per seat.”

Blade pres­i­dent Melis­sa Tomkiel added: “Giv­en the short dis­tances, these routes serve as per­fect cas­es for qui­et and emis­sion-free elec­tric ver­ti­cal air­craft (EVA), and our Euro­pean expan­sion would not be pos­si­ble with­out these trust­ed oper­at­ing part­ners who have safe­ly and prof­itably flown hun­dreds of thou­sands of pas­sen­gers for over 30 years.”

Blade chief finan­cial offi­cer Will Hey­burn said: “These acqui­si­tions should con­tribute free cash flow from day one, accel­er­at­ing our time­line to prof­itabil­i­ty while gen­er­at­ing a great return on invest­ment today that will only be enhanced by the future intro­duc­tion of EVA.”

Last Decem­ber, Blade Air Mobil­i­ty paid Heli­jet $12 mil­lion to acquire the exclu­sive rights to offer sched­uled heli­copter flights oper­at­ed in Cana­da and across the US Pacif­ic North­west region, with plans to incor­po­rate eVTOL air­craft on routes.

In June last year, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty announced it would pro­vide Blade Air Mobil­i­ty with 60,000 hours of flight time per year using its eVTOL air­craft across South­ern Flori­da and the West Coast of the USA from 2026, with plans to deploy up to 60 air­craft togeth­er with local part­ners for Blade’s use through­out the Unit­ed States.