GALLERY: SkyDrive Completes First Public Demo Flights of its SD-05 eVTOL Aircraft in Tokyo

Sky­Drive has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a series of demo flights of its SD-05 eVTOL air­craft in Tokyo, which were con­duct­ed over four days from Feb­ru­ary 24th to 28th and rep­re­sent the first pub­lic flights the com­pa­ny has organ­ised in the city.

The flights, which were orga­nized in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mit­subishi Estate Co., Ltd., and Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion, took place at Tokyo Big Sight. They were con­duct­ed as part of the ‘Project for Devel­op­ing Busi­ness Mod­els for eVTOL (Fly­ing Car) Ser­vices in Tokyo’, a project of the Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Gov­ern­ment.

The goal of this flight pro­gram was to eval­u­ate the inte­grat­ed ground and flight oper­a­tions need­ed to sup­port the future com­mer­cial­iza­tion of urban eVTOL trans­port. With this in mind, Sky­Drive and its sup­port­ing part­ners assessed the full oper­a­tional sequence from pre-flight prepa­ra­tion through to depar­ture, cruis­ing, land­ing and return­ing the air­craft to the hangar.

With a com­bined focus on the air­craft and the ter­mi­nal facil­i­ties that future pas­sen­gers will require, the project broke new ground as the first such com­pre­hen­sive fea­si­bil­i­ty study of future eVTOL oper­a­tions to take place in Japan.

Ter­mi­nal infra­struc­ture was built to allow mem­bers of the pub­lic to test and pro­vide feed­back on the var­i­ous pre-board­ing pro­ce­dures includ­ing facial recog­ni­tion-enabled pas­sen­ger check-in and pas­sen­ger secu­ri­ty screen­ing.

Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa, Sky­Drive Founder and CEO, said: “Fol­low­ing our suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion flights at the 2025 Osa­ka Expo and the Osakako Ver­ti­port, I am delight­ed to see our air­craft reach­ing the skies of Tokyo for the first time. We are tru­ly grate­ful for the sup­port we have received from the Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Gov­ern­ment and our var­i­ous busi­ness part­ners in stag­ing this series of flights.

“Mul­ti­copters are agile air­craft, ide­al for oper­a­tions in major urban areas with lim­it­ed space to maneu­ver. With a con­tin­ued empha­sis on safe­ty, we look for­ward to pro­vid­ing fur­ther demon­stra­tions of our aircraft’s capa­bil­i­ties.

“As we work towards the intro­duc­tion of com­mer­cial ser­vices, I hope that Tokyo res­i­dents will share our enthu­si­asm and excite­ment for the future of this new form of trans­port. With the government’s plans for region­al devel­op­ment now cat­e­go­riz­ing eVTOL as essen­tial social infra­struc­ture, we are proud, as Japan’s lead­ing eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er, to lead the eVTOL rev­o­lu­tion both in Japan and over­seas.”

Demo Flight Details

The demo flight series oper­at­ed from a ded­i­cat­ed take-off and land­ing site in the out­door tem­po­rary park­ing lot by the East Wing of Tokyo Big Sight, an icon­ic Tokyo land­mark. The demo flight fea­tured the same mod­el flown by Sky­Drive at the World Expo 2025 event in Osa­ka and at the near­by OsakaKo Ver­ti­port. As the flight route is sit­u­at­ed close to the busy flight paths approach­ing Tokyo’s Hane­da Air­port, the demo flights also served as a fur­ther oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­firm the low acoustic foot­print of the SKYDRIVE.

The aircraft’s flight path start­ed from with­in the lim­it­ed space avail­able inside the Tokyo Big Sight grounds before extend­ing out over the sea. The SKYDRIVE’s abil­i­ty to take off and land in rel­a­tive­ly con­fined spaces is a huge advan­tage in ensur­ing safe oper­a­tions from rooftops and oth­er com­pact ver­ti­ports.

Safe oper­a­tion from small ver­ti­ports increas­es the num­ber of poten­tial­ly usable ver­ti­port sites, allow­ing future ser­vices to approach door-to-door con­nec­tiv­i­ty even in city neigh­bour­hoods where local char­ac­ter­is­tics make the con­struc­tion of large ver­ti­ports dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble.

Mak­ing the Case for Urban eVTOL

The Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Gov­ern­ment has devel­oped a roadmap for the intro­duc­tion of eVTOL infra­struc­ture and ser­vices and is active­ly sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of the indus­try, rec­og­niz­ing the poten­tial for eVTOL air­craft to improve res­i­dent qual­i­ty of life by com­bat­ting traf­fic con­ges­tion and rad­i­cal­ly trans­form­ing the move­ment of peo­ple and goods.

Since 2022, Mit­subishi Estate Co., Ltd. and Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion have been val­i­dat­ing var­i­ous busi­ness mod­els and con­duct­ing tech­ni­cal ver­i­fi­ca­tions to assess the fea­si­bil­i­ty of var­i­ous pas­sen­ger eVTOL ser­vices.

These stud­ies, which are designed to pave the way for the use of air taxis in and around Tokyo, include poten­tial routes between the rooftop of the Shin-Marunouchi Build­ing in cen­tral Tokyo and des­ti­na­tions along Tokyo Bay.

Fly­ing these routes with a con­ven­tion­al heli­copter reveals the poten­tial for a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in trav­el time to below one-third that of road trav­el, while also reveal­ing the impor­tance of ensur­ing time sav­ings in the pre- and post-trav­el pro­ce­dures, includ­ing the pas­sen­ger board­ing process and access to and from ver­ti­ports.

Addi­tion­al­ly, these pre­lim­i­nary stud­ies con­firmed the unique appeal of the scenery on these routes, the strong like­ly demand for scenic flights, and the core impor­tance of cen­tral busi­ness dis­tricts and train sta­tions as can­di­date ver­ti­port loca­tions.

Fol­low­ing these inves­ti­ga­tions and fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies, Sky­Drive joined the project in 2025, its fourth year. As described above, Sky­Drive, togeth­er with the project part­ners, was able to use this series of demo flights to assess both air­craft and ter­mi­nal oper­a­tions.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with UK-based Sky­ports, a glob­al leader in ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture, we sought out vol­un­teer mem­bers of the pub­lic who could expe­ri­ence part of the eVTOL pas­sen­ger jour­ney, includ­ing facial recog­ni­tion-enabled check-in and secu­ri­ty screen­ing, as part of our efforts to con­firm the effec­tive­ness of pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal oper­a­tions.

This feed­back from this activ­i­ty allowed Sky­Drive to gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of the oper­a­tional and con­ve­nience require­ments that will be nec­es­sary to ensure suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial­iza­tion.