Eve-led consortium joins UK Civil Aviation Authority to develop concept of operations for urban air mobility

A con­sor­tium of urban air mobil­i­ty and avi­a­tion com­pa­nies led by Eve, the first com­pa­ny to grad­u­ate from EmbraerX, is to work with the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty on a con­cept of oper­a­tions for inte­grat­ing air taxis and eVTOL air­craft into the UK’s air­space.

As part of the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty’s Future Air Mobil­i­ty Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box, the project will exam­ine how eVTOL air­craft may oper­ate in trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers and car­go over urban and region­al areas. This includes explor­ing jour­neys from Lon­don City Air­port (LCY) to Heathrow Air­port (LHR), with stops in between.

As well as these two air­ports, oth­er com­pa­nies includ­ed in the con­sor­tium include, NATS, Sky­ports, Ate­ch, Volo­copter and Ver­ti­cal Aero­space.

David Tait, Head of Inno­va­tion at the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, said: “The Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box was estab­lished to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment where inno­va­tion in avi­a­tion can be explored in line with the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Authority’s core prin­ci­ples of safe­ty, secu­ri­ty, and con­sumer pro­tec­tion.

“This project was select­ed to join the Sand­box as it will help us to devel­op a strate­gic frame­work for har­mon­is­ing the low-lev­el air­space, which will sup­port the devel­op­ment of urban and region­al air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions across the UK.”

Many believe the intro­duc­tion of eVTOL air­craft can offer green­er and faster modes of trans­porta­tion for pas­sen­gers and car­go, improve urban and region­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty, cre­ate new jobs, and spur inno­va­tion.

The con­cept of oper­a­tions will help make eVTOL oper­a­tions in the UK pos­si­ble, allow­ing the indus­try to scale and deliv­er envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to the UK. Data from sim­u­la­tions will help pol­i­cy­mak­ers devel­op com­mu­ni­ty-friend­ly rules, mit­i­gate com­mu­ni­ty noise impacts, and draft air­space pro­ce­dures for future flight tests.

This lat­est announce­ment from Eve fol­lows on from its ear­li­er news that it has worked with Airser­vices Aus­tralia to devel­op a Con­cept of Oper­a­tions for urban air mobil­i­ty in Mel­bourne and help accel­er­ate the mar­ket in the city. That doc­u­ment can be viewed here.

David Rot­tblatt, Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment and leader of the Urban Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment project for Eve, added: “Today, flights between Lon­don City Air­port and Heathrow Air­port are lim­it­ed, and the routes are designed specif­i­cal­ly for heli­copters. By col­lab­o­rat­ing with the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, we aim to demon­strate to the pub­lic why reg­u­la­to­ry sup­port is required to build eVTOL-spe­cif­ic routes.

“This unprece­dent­ed con­sor­tium, con­sist­ing of some of aviation’s fore­most thought lead­ers, will work towards prepar­ing Lon­don, and even­tu­al­ly the UK, to be a viable and suc­cess­ful mar­ket for pas­sen­ger and car­go flights using eVTOLs.”