Bye Aerospace’s eFlyer to lead Quantum XYZ’s air taxi service in Los Angeles

Quan­tum XYZ will spear­head its new elec­tric air taxi ser­vice in Los Ange­les with a fleet of Bye Aerospace’s all-elec­tric eFly­er 4s and eFly­er 2 air­craft.

The com­pa­ny signed a pur­chase deposit agree­ment for 22 four-seat eFly­ers and two two-seat eFly­ers in August 2019, which are labelled under the eCTOL (elec­tric con­ven­tion­al take­off and land­ing) cat­e­go­ry. They will be used to link pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling between LAX and oth­er air­ports in the city.

And ear­li­er this year, Quan­tum XYZ announced it had cho­sen OSM Avi­a­tion Acad­e­my to train pilots in the eFly­er, which includes a com­mit­ment by OSM to refer to a steady sup­ply of pilots trained to FAA com­mer­cial stan­dards. A total of 160 air­craft will be deliv­ered to the two com­pa­nies start­ing at the end of 2021.

Tony Thomp­son, Quan­tum XYZ’s CEO, said: “With the arrival of elec­tric air­craft, we are enter­ing a new gold­en age in avi­a­tion. Since the dawn of flight, point to point air trav­el has been a lux­u­ry avail­able only to a priv­i­leged few. Quantum’s ground­break­ing air taxi ser­vice will final­ly make point to point air trav­el wide­ly avail­able.”

Quan­tum XYZ will pro­vide tuition reim­burse­ment for select OSM cadets. For stu­dent cadets in OSM’s Quan­tum-brand­ed train­ing pro­gramme, OSM will use the eFly­er air­craft.

“Quantum’s part­ner­ship with OSM means that Quan­tum pilots will fly com­mer­cial­ly in essen­tial­ly the same air­craft in which they trained,” said Thomp­son. “Quan­tum com­mer­cial pilots will be inti­mate­ly famil­iar with their air­craft, set­ting a new stan­dard for safe­ty.”

Espen Høi­by, CEO of OSM Avi­a­tion Group, added: “Air trav­el is instru­men­tal in bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er both region­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Since humans will always have the urge to explore this world, we need to find sus­tain­able solu­tions to meet that need. There­fore, OSM Avi­a­tion is excit­ed to join forces with Quan­tum XYZ to shape a green­er and safer avi­a­tion indus­try in the years to come.”

Estab­lished in 2014, Bye Aerospace’s eFly­er 2 was launched so the two-seater air­craft could be ful­ly cer­ti­fied under the new FAR 23 and be brought to mar­ket. All of Bye Aerospace’s cur­rent and future fam­i­lies of air­craft pro­duce no CO2 — sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er­ing oper­at­ing costs and noise lev­els dur­ing oper­a­tion. 

George Bye, CEO of Bye Aero­space and mem­ber of Quan­tum XYZ’s board of advis­ers, said: “Elec­tric avi­a­tion, includ­ing our eFly­er fam­i­ly of elec­tric air­craft, is the spring­board for a move­ment that we believe will breathe new life into the avi­a­tion indus­try.

“That includes imple­ment­ing cre­ative ways to improve effec­tive, eco­nom­ic access to pilot train­ing. The OSM-Quan­tum mod­el, which focus­es fore­most on new pro­fes­sion­al pilot train­ing safe­ty, aligns per­fect­ly with Bye Aerospace’s prin­ci­ples.”