CITIC Offshore Helicopter and Lilium to establish eVTOL aircraft network in China’s Greater Bay Area

Lil­i­um has announced a part­ner­ship with CITIC Off­shore Heli­copter (COHC) in Chi­na, which will see the two com­pa­nies work togeth­er to estab­lish an eVTOL air­craft oper­a­tion net­work in the coun­try’s Greater Bay Area.

As part of the agree­ment, Lil­i­um and COHC — Chi­na’s sole heli­copter port pilotage provider — will work togeth­er to devel­op ser­vices in the region based on mar­ket demand, and even­tu­al­ly offer reg­u­lar eVTOL ser­vices.

While the net­work will ini­tial­ly com­mence in the Greater Bay Area, there is plan to pro­vide addi­tion­al planned ser­vices across the Guang­dong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Hainan Island, and Tian­jin.

Klaus Roewe CEO of Lil­i­um, said: “The part­ner­ship high­lights the shared aspi­ra­tions of COHC and Lil­i­um to cre­ate a sus­tain­able and effi­cient aer­i­al trans­porta­tion sys­tem that address­es the grow­ing demand for pre­mi­um region­al mobil­i­ty solu­tions.

“Chi­na is expect­ed to account for close to 25 per cent of the eVTOL mar­ket and this announce­ment reaf­firms our com­mit­ment to the region and desire to bring fast and sus­tain­able trav­el to more peo­ple and to offer out­stand­ing flight expe­ri­ences for our cus­tomers.”

This lat­est news fol­lows Lilium’s part­ner­ship with oth­er sup­pli­ers in the Chi­na region, includ­ing an agree­ment with Heli-East­ern and an MOU with the Bao’an Dis­trict of Shen­zhen munic­i­pal­i­ty.

COHC and Lil­i­um are com­mit­ted to joint­ly facil­i­tat­ing the launch of this ground­break­ing ser­vice in the Greater Bay Area. This includes strate­gi­cal­ly select­ing pro­duc­tion bases, con­duct­ing test flights, imple­ment­ing after-sales ser­vice pro­to­cols, and iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial sites of inter­est and part­ners for ver­ti­ports.

By com­bin­ing COHC’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence in avi­a­tion ser­vices with Lil­i­um’s inno­v­a­tive eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy, this part­ner­ship is poised to rede­fine region­al air mobil­i­ty in the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of COHC, added: “We’re look­ing for­ward to work­ing with Lil­i­um to build an eVTOL net­work in the Greater Bay Area and beyond. It’s impor­tant for our cus­tomers to be able to trav­el quick­ly, sus­tain­ably, and in pre­mi­um comfort—and with Lil­i­um, we’re excit­ed to do just that.”

Chi­na’s Greater Bay Area com­pris­es the two Spe­cial Admin­is­tra­tive Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, and the nine munic­i­pal­i­ties of Guangzhou, Shen­zhen, Zhuhai, Fos­han, Huizhou, Dong­guan, Zhong­shan, Jiang­men and Zhao­qing in Guang­dong Province.

It is among the four largest bay areas in the world, com­pared with the likes of New York City, Tokyo and San Fran­cis­co, and has total pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 71.2 mil­lion peo­ple — five per cent of Chi­na’s total pop­u­la­tion.