China’s Aerofugia Begins eVTOL Certification Process

Aerofu­gia, a sub­sidiary of Chi­nese automak­er Geely, offi­cial­ly began type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its AE200 air taxi dur­ing a first board meet­ing held last week in the city of Cheng­du, the cap­i­tal of Sichuan Province in South­west Chi­na, reports globalsky.media.

The eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er signed a Project Spe­cif­ic Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan (PSCP) with the Chi­na Civ­il Avi­a­tion South­west Area Man­age­ment Bureau, a region­al avi­a­tion bureau under the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion Of Chi­na (CAAC), to advance the devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process of the AE200.

More than 20 experts attend­ed this meet­ing includ­ing Guo Liang, Pres­i­dent of Geely and Dr. Xue Song­bai, the company’s CTO. The two men dis­cussed the AE200 mod­el design and its poten­tial oper­a­tions, while report­ing the progress of air­wor­thi­ness plan­ning and project devel­op­ment. The AE200 Project Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee (TCB) and Project Review Team (TCT) were for­mal­ly estab­lished.

Guo Liang (3rd from left) at the Sign­ing

Zhou Cheng­gang, South­west Region­al Admin­is­tra­tor of CAAC, intro­duced the prepara­to­ry work of TCB and TCT after the accep­tance of the project. The com­mit­tee reviewed and approved the estab­lish­ment of the pro­fes­sion­al group of the AE200 project review team, con­firmed the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of these team mem­bers, and then the two par­ties for­mal­ly signed the AE200 Spe­cial Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan. The board will con­sid­er var­i­ous fac­tors includ­ing the design, flight test­ing results, pro­duc­tion, main­te­nance and oper­a­tion of the air­craft.

The AE200 suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its first test flight in Chi­na back in Feb­ru­ary, mak­ing it the largest eVTOL air­craft to com­plete a maid­en flight in the coun­try.

Chi­na: Aerofu­gia Suc­cess­ful­ly Com­pletes First Tri­al Flight of Five-Seater eVTOL

The meet­ing is a sign that the com­pa­ny is mak­ing progress towards com­mer­cial­is­ing the air­craft. Guo stat­ed Aerofu­gia “will work hard to meet cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards and improve the design based on the require­ments and sug­ges­tions from the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion board.”

He con­tin­ued, “Based on the air­wor­thi­ness require­ments of the AE200 project includ­ing its engi­neer­ing design, flight test­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and main­te­nance and oper­a­tion, the com­mit­tee and rel­e­vant experts will review the plan­ning of the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Guo added, “This meet­ing means that the air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion work of the largest eVTOL air­craft in Chi­na has entered the stage of deter­min­ing the nec­es­sary require­ments for the AE200.”

The Air­craft is a five-seater eVTOL air taxi pro­to­type with a tilt-motor con­fig­u­ra­tion, which allows the front four of its eight sets of pro­pellers to tilt for­ward dur­ing cruise flight.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.aerofugia.com

(News Source: https://globalsky.media)

(Images: Aerofu­gia)