DUBAI AIRSHOW 2025: SkyGrid and High Lander Aviation to Develop AAM Technology and Regulatory Frameworks in Abu Dhabi

Sky­Grid and High Lan­der Avi­a­tion will explore the devel­op­ment of a cut­ting-edge air­space man­age­ment ecosys­tem to sup­port the safe inte­gra­tion of crewed and uncrewed aer­i­al vehi­cles, includ­ing car­go drones and eVTOL) air­craft.

Signed at this week’s Dubai Air­show, both par­ties will work togeth­er to assess Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Sup­port­ing Oper­a­tional Envi­ron­ments (SOE), focus­ing on key areas such as air­space inte­gra­tion, dig­i­tal oper­a­tions, ver­ti­port inte­gra­tion, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works.

The goal is to devel­op tech­nol­o­gy roadmaps, reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works, and infra­struc­ture plans for AAM oper­a­tions in Abu Dhabi and oth­er regions across the world.

Jia Xu, CEO of Sky­Grid, said: “This col­lab­o­ra­tion rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in shap­ing the dig­i­tal foun­da­tion of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in the UAE and across the Mid­dle East.

“Togeth­er with High Lan­der, we’re bring­ing the world clos­er to a uni­fied vision of safe, scal­able, and sus­tain­able air­space inte­gra­tion. By com­bin­ing SkyGrid’s exper­tise in high-assur­ance autonomous flight ser­vices with High Lander’s proven UTM tech­nolo­gies, we can help Abu Dhabi realise its vision of becom­ing a glob­al leader in next-gen­er­a­tion avi­a­tion and autonomous trans­porta­tion.”

The ini­tia­tive aligns with Abu Dhabi’s Eco­nom­ic Vision 2030, rein­forc­ing its com­mit­ment to tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, eco­nom­ic diver­si­fi­ca­tion, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

By lever­ag­ing SkyGrid’s exper­tise in next-gen­er­a­tion dig­i­tal air­space inte­gra­tion solu­tions and High Lander’s lead­ing UTM tech­nol­o­gy, both com­pa­nies believe this part­ner­ship will accel­er­ate AAM adop­tion in the region and posi­tion Abu Dhabi as a glob­al hub for autonomous air trans­porta­tion.

Alon Abel­son, CEO and founder of High Lan­der, added: “This part­ner­ship between High Lan­der and Sky­Grid marks an excit­ing step for­ward in advanc­ing a con­nect­ed and intel­li­gent AAM ecosys­tem. Our shared goal is to cre­ate a har­mo­nized oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment where uncrewed and crewed air­craft can coex­ist safe­ly and effi­cient­ly.

“The UAE’s lead­er­ship and their com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion, with the sup­port of indus­try giants such as Boe­ing, make it the per­fect envi­ron­ment to demon­strate how automa­tion, data-dri­ven man­age­ment, and cross-indus­try col­lab­o­ra­tion can trans­form the future of air mobil­i­ty.”

Based in Austin, Texas, Sky­Grid builds high-assur­ance third-par­ty ser­vices to enable the safe oper­a­tion and inte­gra­tion of autonomous air­craft. Sky­Grid also acts as the oper­a­tional nexus for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, inte­grat­ing and man­ag­ing data, infra­struc­ture, access, and traf­fic to sup­port scaled oper­a­tions.

High Lan­der was estab­lished in 2018 by avi­a­tion vet­er­ans and tech­nol­o­gy experts with a dream: to safe­ly and effec­tive­ly inte­grate UAS into air­spaces world­wide. The com­pa­ny is achiev­ing this with two scal­able, soft­ware-only solu­tions. The first is Ori­on DFM, a hard­ware-agnos­tic plat­form for cre­at­ing, man­ag­ing, and automat­ing UAS mis­sions for any appli­ca­tion and at any scale.

The sec­ond is Vega UTM, a next-gen­er­a­tion UAS traf­fic man­age­ment plat­form that pro­vides air­space author­i­ties with the tools they need to main­tain strict safe­ty stan­dards in increas­ing­ly crowd­ed skies.