DUBAI AIRSHOW 2023: ArcosJet confirms purchase of 10 Lilium Jets, expected to be delivered as early as 2026

Lil­i­um has strength­ened its pres­ence in the Mid­dle East, with Arcos­Jet con­firm­ing it has pur­chased 10 Lil­i­um Jets which will be deliv­ered through 2026 and 2027.

This announce­ment was made today (Mon­day) on day one of this year’s Dubai Air­show and fol­lows the appoint­ment of Arcos­Jet as an exclu­sive autho­rised deal­er for pri­vate sales of the Lil­i­um Jet in Dubai.

Found­ed in 2014, Arcos­Jet has become one of the top busi­ness air­craft bro­kers with strong pres­ence in the Mid­dle East, Europe and the Com­mon­wealth of Inde­pen­dent States (CIS).

It fea­tures a port­fo­lio of dozens of suc­cess­ful inter­na­tion­al air­craft trans­ac­tions, spe­cial­is­ing in large and long-range busi­ness jets seg­ment. By ear­ly 2020s, the com­pa­ny has expand­ed its busi­ness port­fo­lio to projects in air­line indus­try, new air­craft deal­er­ship, heli­copter & eVTOL oper­a­tion and infra­struc­ture.

Mikhail Alenkin, Arcos­Jet founder and CEO, said: “Today we are pleased to announce the details of our pur­chase of Lil­i­um Pio­neer Edi­tion Jets and are con­fi­dent that the air­craft will quick­ly find buy­ers and lay the foun­da­tions for the devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able air trans­port in the Mid­dle East.

“Togeth­er with Lil­i­um, Arcos­Jet offers its cus­tomers best-in-class inno­va­tions and devel­op­ments for the future of trans­port. We see this as the most prof­itable invest­ment in the high-tech and sus­tain­able future of avi­a­tion, as well as in the devel­op­ment of region­al air mobil­i­ty.

Lil­i­um’s Pio­neer Edi­tion Jet will offer the largest cab­in in its cat­e­go­ry, offer­ing four seats and com­bin­ing low-noise and high-speed region­al trans­port with zero oper­at­ing emis­sions. Each Lil­i­um Jet will be deliv­ered to cus­tomers with a com­pre­hen­sive main­te­nance pro­gram, pilot train­ing, and two charg­ing sta­tions.

Sebastien Borel, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at Lil­i­um, added: “Togeth­er with Arcos­Jet, we are excit­ed to be enter­ing new mar­kets by intro­duc­ing our rev­o­lu­tion­ary Lil­i­um Jet and thrilled with their firm com­mit­ment for 10 jets. With ArcosJet’s expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in pri­vate air­craft sales, I am con­fi­dent our part­ner­ship will help cus­tomers appre­ci­ate the unique capa­bil­i­ties of eVTOL flight.”

The Lil­i­um Pio­neer Edi­tion Jet is the first planned mod­el of the Lil­i­um Jet and will com­fort­ably seat four pas­sen­gers on esti­mat­ed non-stop flights of up to 175 km at 250 km/h. The first manned flight of the type-con­form­ing air­craft is sched­uled for late 2024, with type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion expect­ed in late 2025.

Speak­ing exclu­sive­ly to eVTOL Insights, Paul-Frank Bijou, VP of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Lil­i­um, talked in more detail about the poten­tial for AAM in the region.

He said: They [the Mid­dle East] real­ly want this to hap­pen. Sau­di Ara­bia is super fast at the moment and have men­tioned eVTOL air­craft sev­er­al times. You know they have invest­ed in Lil­i­um as well and want much more than this; from cen­tres of excel­lence to assem­bly lines. They real­ly want to count on the indus­try which is great, so there’s a lot of inter­est.

When asked about oth­er aspects of the indus­try and how they can fit into the region too, Bijou added: “For infra­struc­ture, we have part­nered with a num­ber of com­pa­nies and this is some­thing the air­lines and oper­a­tors ask us all the time.

“It’s OK to buy your air­craft; where can we fly? This is a very basic ques­tion, so we need to engage with a pow­er com­pa­ny and with ver­ti­ports FBOs want­i­ng to do new things. In the UAE, it’s rel­a­tive­ly easy because the RTA decid­ed to devel­op the net­work them­selves — just like Mona­co did with the elec­tric plugs for the taxis.

“In Sau­di Ara­bia, they decid­ed to go full blown with sus­tain­abil­i­ty. On top of their five mega projects, includ­ing NEOM and Red Sea, they want to con­nect all of them with sus­tain­able avi­a­tion.

“My dream is that we should have as many eVTOL air­craft as com­mer­cial air­craft, because this is what you need; you need to fly the same num­ber of pas­sen­gers to the final des­ti­na­tion. Hence the need to have the same num­ber of air­craft.

“In 10 years, it will be unthink­able to be stuck in traf­fic jams for ages. What do we need to do to get there? Con­crete orders and infra­struc­ture. We need much more firm order — not only by Lil­i­um, but by oth­er com­pa­nies as well. Because the seg­ments are dif­fer­ent, we need the whole ecosys­tem.”

Arcos­Jet and Lil­i­um will be show­cas­ing a full-scale mock­up of the Lil­i­um Jet inte­ri­or expe­ri­ence for the first time in the Mid­dle East, locat­ed at stand 84 in the AAM Pavil­ion.