Former Airbus CEO Tom Enders joins Lilium’s board and brings significant industry expertise

Tom Enders — who was Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Air­bus for more than a decade — has joined the board at Lil­i­um, which is con­tin­u­ing to devel­op its eVTOL air taxi — the Lil­i­um Jet.

Since the Ger­man star­tup’s con­cep­tion in 2015, Lil­i­um has been sup­port­ed by a world-class board who pro­vide sound coun­sel which is derived from deep expe­ri­ence in aero­space, entre­pre­neur­ship and build­ing multi­na­tion­al brands. Enders’ role will involve deci­sion mak­ing which influ­ences the ongo­ing growth of the busi­ness.

Fol­low­ing an ear­ly career in the Ger­man Min­istry of Defense as well as serv­ing with the Ger­man Air­borne troops as a Major in the Army Reserve, his pas­sion for avi­a­tion led to his long-stand­ing role at Air­bus.

A sea­soned heli­copter pilot — and keen sky­div­er — Enders’ impres­sive tenure in the indus­try includes almost two decades serv­ing in senior posi­tions at the aero­space giant.

Com­ment­ing on join­ing the Lil­i­um board, Enders said: “When Lil­i­um CEO Daniel Wie­gand asked me a few months ago if I would accept an appoint­ment to Lil­i­um’s board, I did­n’t have to think for long.

“Lil­i­um, unlike hard­ly any oth­er avi­a­tion com­pa­ny in Europe, stands for fresh pio­neer­ing spir­it, for a bold depar­ture into new ter­ri­to­ry. This kind of pio­neer­ing spir­it, inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ial courage have always fas­ci­nat­ed me — and dri­ven me through­out my almost 30-year career in the aero­space indus­try.

“Per­haps the thing that has impressed me most about Lil­i­um was that they start­ed with a strong busi­ness case and focused from the start on inter­ci­ty shut­tle flights, which allow for high­er pas­sen­ger load fac­tors. 

“I believe with this Lil­i­um is solv­ing the prob­lem of noto­ri­ous­ly low load-fac­tors in on-demand air-taxi busi­ness­es of the past. It will also help to get tick­et prices down and tru­ly democ­ra­tise elec­tric flight, fol­low­ing Lilium’s mis­sion.”

Accord­ing to Lil­i­um’s time­line, the Lil­i­um Jet is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing ser­i­al air­craft devel­op­ment, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion — which will go up until 2024. The fol­low­ing year, Lil­i­um expects to launch its first ser­vice and begin scal­ing up oper­a­tions in cities across the world.

Towards the end of last year, the com­pa­ny announced excit­ing details of its first ver­ti­port loca­tion in the the USA — Lake Nona in Orlan­do, Flori­da. Clos­er to home, it agreed part­ner­ships with Düs­sel­dorf Air­port and Cologne/Bonn Air­port, to explore how both of them can become hubs with­in a region­al air mobil­i­ty net­work in North Rhine-West­phalia, Germany’s most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed state.

Enders praised the work of the team at Lil­i­um — espe­cial­ly found­ing mem­bers Wie­gand, Patrick Nathen, Matthias Mein­er and Sebastien Born, who met while study­ing at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich.

He said: “The young found­ing engi­neers had the courage to come up with a tech­ni­cal con­cept that is tai­lored for their busi­ness mod­el and pur­pose­ful­ly dif­fer­ent to tra­di­tion­al VTOL solu­tions. Although it is tech­ni­cal­ly more chal­leng­ing, they are using elec­tric tur­bo fans with acoustic lin­ers and have solved the asso­ci­at­ed engi­neer­ing chal­lenges.

“This is the same propul­sion sys­tem that pro­pels 95 per cent of all com­mer­cial air­lin­ers today and it gives Lil­i­um the same advan­tages: low­er noise emis­sions than open pro­pellers, high­er cus­tomer accep­tance, and a small­er air­craft foot­print. Low noise and high seat capac­i­ty are cru­cial to get mar­ket access and eco­nom­ics right.

Talk­ing about Lil­i­um’s jour­ney towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, he added: “Today, Lil­i­um is on its way from vision­ary start-up to seri­ous air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er and ser­vice provider. This is a rocky and by no means risk-free road.

“But how are we going to move avi­a­tion for­ward if not with fresh ideas and coura­geous young entre­pre­neurs? The his­to­ry of avi­a­tion is full of so-called experts and doubters, who declared back then that every­thing that we see fly­ing today would be impos­si­ble or imprac­ti­cal.

“What I have learned in three decades in the avi­a­tion indus­try, I am hap­py to bring to Lil­i­um. Our indus­try needs noth­ing so much as inno­va­tion and new per­spec­tives. That’s the only way we can main­tain and renew our license to fly.”