EHang’s Thailand AAM Sandbox: First Human-Carrying Flight of Pilotless eVTOL aircraft

EHang suc­cess­ful­ly flew the Direc­tor Gen­er­al of the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty of Thai­land (CAAT), who was aboard its EH216‑S eVTOL air­craft in Bangkok as part of the com­pa­ny’s AAM Sand­box Ini­tia­tive in the coun­try.

In doing so, Air Chief Mar­shal Man­at Cha­vanapray­oon became the world’s first civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty chief to ride the pilot­less EH216‑S on an urban flight, which took place on Novem­ber 24th.

The event received strong sup­ports from senior Thai gov­ern­ment offi­cials, with dis­tin­guished atten­dees includ­ing Han Kok Juan, Direc­tor Gen­er­al of Singapore’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, Dr. Arak Sutivong, Deputy CEO of SCB X Pub­lic Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, togeth­er with near­ly 100 Thai busi­ness lead­ers and media rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

EHang’s EH216‑S com­plet­ed a series of take­offs and land­ings, as well as route flights. The com­pa­ny says these flights mark sig­nif­i­cant progress for the Thailand’s AAM Sand­box Ini­tia­tive toward com­mer­cial oper­a­tion. They also lay a sol­id foun­da­tion for EHang to deep­en its pres­ence in the Thai mar­ket and launch future com­mer­cial ser­vices, as well as estab­lish­ing a bench­mark for the path to com­mer­cialise the AAM indus­try in South­east Asia.

Conor Yang, Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer of EHang, said: “This event rep­re­sents a key prac­ti­cal achieve­ment of EHang’s over­seas strat­e­gy. By con­tin­u­ous­ly advanc­ing human-car­ry­ing flights under the Sand­box Ini­tia­tive in core urban sce­nar­ios such as Bangkok, EHang will fur­ther assist the Thai gov­ern­ment and CAAT in improv­ing Thailand’s AAM oper­a­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

“With the sup­port of the CAAT, Thai­land is high­ly like­ly to achieve the world’s first com­mer­cial eVTOL oper­a­tions using an inno­v­a­tive reg­u­la­to­ry approach of “sand­box”, cre­at­ing a demon­stra­tion mod­el for South­east Asia and the world. EHang will con­tin­ue to pro­vide advanced inte­grat­ed air mobil­i­ty solu­tions to ben­e­fit more coun­tries across the globe.”

Under the sup­port and over­sight of the CAAT, the EHang work team, led by Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Hu Longx­u­an, who over­sees com­mer­cial oper­a­tions depart­ment, ded­i­cat­ed full efforts to ensure the com­plete suc­cess of this flight event.

This marked the first time EHang con­duct­ed over­seas on-site demon­stra­tions and val­i­da­tion of the EH216-S’s com­pre­hen­sive emer­gency sce­nario safe­ty capa­bil­i­ties. Dur­ing this col­lab­o­ra­tion, EHang and CAAT’s UAM team held in-depth dis­cus­sions on four core pil­lars: flight safe­ty, prod­uct tech­nol­o­gy, after-sales main­te­nance, and oper­at­ing sys­tems.

Togeth­er they val­i­dat­ed the EH216‑S’s safe­ty and com­mer­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty through nine extreme sce­nario tests and four ded­i­cat­ed tech­ni­cal exchanges.

Cha­vanapray­oon said: “The advanced tech­nol­o­gy and autonomous safe­ty per­for­mance demon­strat­ed by the EH216‑S are impres­sive. This flight demon­stra­tion rep­re­sents not only a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the devel­op­ment of AAM tech­nolo­gies which is expect­ed to trans­form future air trans­porta­tion sys­tems, but forms part of Thailand’s ongo­ing efforts to become an Avi­a­tion Hub in the region.

“CAAT is com­mit­ted to serv­ing both as a reg­u­la­tor and a facil­i­ta­tor to ensure that mod­ern avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies can be safe­ly and effec­tive­ly imple­ment­ed. We look for­ward to see­ing Thai­land achieve a break­through in estab­lish­ing air routes con­nect­ing air­ports and urban areas. With the 2026 Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Sym­po­sium orga­nized by Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (ICAO) to be held in Thai­land, we expect the coun­try to become a glob­al mod­el for com­mer­cial­iza­tion and large-scale devel­op­ment of AAM in 2026.”

As the world’s first pilot­less human-car­ry­ing eVTOL com­pa­ny to obtain the Type Cer­tifi­cate, Pro­duc­tion Cer­tifi­cate, and Stan­dard Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cate from China’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (CAAC), EHang has iden­ti­fied Thai­land as one of its core over­seas strate­gic mar­kets.

The com­pa­ny com­plet­ed Bangkok’s debut flight in Novem­ber 2024 and launched the AAM Sand­box Ini­tia­tive with con­tin­u­ous tri­al oper­a­tions in Octo­ber 2025. Accord­ing to plans, EHang will col­lab­o­rate with local part­ners to grad­u­al­ly expand the sand­box area to pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions such as Pat­taya, Phuket, and Koh Samui, build­ing a diver­si­fied low-alti­tude route net­work cov­er­ing urban com­mut­ing and aer­i­al tourism.

Luong Pham of Aer­i­al Sea ven­tures, sup­port­ing orga­ni­za­tion for the event, added: “The EH216‑S’s suc­cess­ful flight at core Bangkok land­marks such as the roy­al-owned SCB head­quar­ters, cou­pled with the CAAT Direc­tor General’s per­son­al par­tic­i­pa­tion, not only rep­re­sents author­i­ta­tive recog­ni­tion of cut­ting-edge autonomous tech­nol­o­gy but also high­lights Thailand’s strate­gic vision and com­mit­ment to embrac­ing trans­porta­tion inno­va­tion and devel­op­ing its AAM ecosys­tem.”