EHang partners with HELI-EASTERN for Urban Air Mobility operations in integrated airspace in Shenzhen, China

EHang has formed a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Shen­zhen East Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion, known as HELI-EASTERN, which will explore and fur­ther imple­ment urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions in des­ig­nat­ed inte­grat­ed air­space for heli­copters and AAVs in Shen­zen, Chi­na.

This is an impor­tant mile­stone in imple­ment­ing EHang’s 100 Air Mobil­i­ty Routes Ini­tia­tive in the Greater Bay Area, and both com­pa­nies aim to form part­ner­ship in the appli­ca­tion of inno­v­a­tive AAVs and oper­a­tional mod­els in the avi­a­tion indus­try.

This will include devel­op­ing low-alti­tude UAM oper­a­tion man­age­ment sys­tem and explor­ing spe­cif­ic UAM use cas­es, such as aer­i­al emer­gency res­cue for ground trans­porta­tion and aer­i­al car­go trans­porta­tion over the high­way net­work.

Huazhi Hu, Founder, Chair­man and CEO of EHang, said: “We are very pleased to coop­er­ate with HELI-EASTERN to set the bench­mark in inte­grat­ed air­space appli­ca­tions. HELI-EASTERN is the first gen­er­al avi­a­tion car­ri­er to join EHang’s own AAV oper­a­tion pro­gram, which is a key mile­stone in the urban air mobil­i­ty indus­try.

“This is not only an impor­tant step in EHang’s 100 Air Mobil­i­ty Routes Ini­tia­tive, but also sig­ni­fies EHang’s entry into Shen­zhen with our pas­sen­ger-grade EHang 216 AAVs and a new chap­ter in our AAV tri­al oper­a­tions. We will lever­age our strengths in both soft­ware and hard­ware tech­nolo­gies to part­ner with HELI-EASTERN in con­tin­u­ing to nur­ture the eco-sys­tem for urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions.”

HELI-EASTERN is a major low-alti­tude gen­er­al avi­a­tion car­ri­er and heli­copter ser­vice provider in the Guang­dong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and has also been des­ig­nat­ed by the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na and the Shen­zhen Munic­i­pal Gov­ern­ment as a pilot unit for low-alti­tude avi­a­tion reform in Chi­na.

At its heli­copter base in Shen­zhen with EHang, both par­ties have con­duct­ed demo flights with HELI-EASTERN’s heli­copter Bell 206 and a pas­sen­ger-grade AAV EHang 216 fly­ing togeth­er to demon­strate live prac­ti­cal UAM oper­a­tions in an inte­grat­ed air­space. In addi­tion, two units of EHang 216 AAVs show­cased tri­al flights simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and safe­ly in the shared air­space.

Qi Zhao, Chair­man of HELI-EASTERN, said: “As a nation­al low-alti­tude reform pilot unit rec­og­nized by the CAAC and the Shen­zhen Munic­i­pal Gov­ern­ment, HELI-EASTERN has joined hands with EHang to active­ly respond to and imple­ment the Guide­lines of the Nation­al Com­pre­hen­sive Trans­porta­tion Net­work Plan issued by the State Coun­cil of Chi­na.

“We will joint­ly estab­lish a pilot project for the urban inte­grat­ed air­space of heli­copters and AAVs and build a low-alti­tude UAM oper­a­tion man­age­ment sys­tem to pro­mote the pio­neer­ing appli­ca­tions of pas­sen­ger-grade AAVs and the low-alti­tude flight net­work in the Guang­dong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.”