Eve Air Mobility and Kenya Airways partner together to support future urban air mobility operations in Africa

Eve Urban Air Mobil­i­ty has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with Kenya Air­ways — through its ful­ly owned sub­sidiary Fahari Avi­a­tion — to sup­port the wide acces­si­bil­i­ty of urban air mobil­i­ty across the coun­try.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion aims to devel­op oper­a­tional mod­els to sup­port Fahari Aviation’s key mar­kets. The com­pa­ny aims to lead the appli­ca­tion of Emerg­ing Avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy in the region and on the con­ti­nent.

Its ini­tial focus will be the appli­ca­tion of drone tech­nol­o­gy in train­ing, oper­a­tions, and traf­fic man­age­ment with a view to grow­ing into main­te­nance dis­tri­b­u­tion and design, and pro­duc­tion of drones.

In addi­tion, this part­ner­ship will estab­lish the co-cre­ation of a foun­da­tion of con­cepts and pro­ce­dures to safe­ly scale elec­tri­cal ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing eVTOL air­craft.

Andre Stein, Pres­i­dent & CEO of Eve, said: “We are thrilled to part­ner with Kenya Air­ways to pro­vide new forms of air mobil­i­ty through­out the region for both peo­ple and goods. The cre­ation of dis­rup­tive and wide­ly acces­si­ble Urban Air Mobil­i­ty solu­tions will help democ­ra­tise mobil­i­ty by mak­ing it more acces­si­ble, afford­able and giv­ing com­mu­ni­ties more options.

“This part­ner­ship will fos­ter long-term mobil­i­ty strate­gies through­out the coun­try and region. With our air­craft and aero­space ser­vices back­ing and Kenya Air­ways’ inno­v­a­tive approach to air mobil­i­ty, we are enthu­si­as­tic about open­ing this region to more sus­tain­able and com­mu­ni­ty-friend­ly air access for all.”

This part­ner­ship will also allow Fahari Avi­a­tion to sup­port Eve’s air­craft and prod­uct devel­op­ment process which will help guide the inte­gra­tion of UAM with Kenya Air­ways’ over­all oper­a­tions.

It will deliv­er a robust strat­e­gy to pro­vide Fahari Aviation’s pas­sen­gers with a sus­tain­able, acces­si­ble, and afford­able trans­porta­tion option. It is esti­mat­ed that using urban air mobil­i­ty from the air­port to down­town, eVTOL air­craft can reduce con­ven­tion­al road trips by up to 90 per cent; turn­ing a 90-minute ride into a six-minute flight.

Eve will sup­port Fahari Avi­a­tion, the Unmanned air­craft sys­tems (UAS) divi­sion of Kenya Air­ways that pro­motes safe and secure UAS usage in the region, in estab­lish­ing its UAM net­work and col­lab­o­rate on the required Urban Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment (UATM) pro­ce­dures and UAM oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment.

Allan Kilavu­ka, Group Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and CEO of Kenya Air­ways, said: “Part­ner­ships are vital in map­ping out the future of our air­line, some­thing which the glob­al cri­sis has rein­forced. Inno­va­tion is a crit­i­cal ele­ment of our long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“Fahari Avi­a­tion is at the fore­front of explor­ing advanced tech­nolo­gies, with a key focus in avi­a­tion, start­ing with drone tech­nol­o­gy. With this part­ner­ship, we look to devel­op inno­v­a­tive air mobil­i­ty solu­tions for our clients in Kenya and through­out the region.”