Japan: AutoFlight “Delivers First Prosperity eVTOL to Customer”

Aut­oFlight has deliv­ered its first Pros­per­i­ty eVTOL air­craft to a cus­tomer in Japan, reports a press release. This marks the inau­gur­al deliv­ery of a civil­ian ton-class eVTOL in the world.

The five-seater Pros­per­i­ty air­craft was hand­ed over to the cus­tomer, a pio­neer­ing Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) oper­a­tor in Japan. While it is unknown who this client is, at present, the cus­tomer is devel­op­ing plans for demon­stra­tion eVTOL flights at the 2025 Osa­ka World Expo, as well as a wider AAM roll­out in Japan.

Mean­while, Aut­oFlight’s Car­ryAll air­craft, the car­go vari­ant of Pros­per­i­ty, has obtained Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (TC) from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion of Chi­na (CAAC) last month. This also marks the world’s first eVTOL air­craft above one ton to have been award­ed this mer­it.

Tian Yu, Founder and co-Chair­man of Aut­oFlight, com­ment­ed, “The offi­cial deliv­ery of the first Pros­per­i­ty to a cus­tomer sig­ni­fies a new chap­ter for Aut­oFlight as we begin to despatch our elec­tric air­craft to glob­al mar­kets. While, on the car­go side, the receipt of orders for over 200 Car­ryAll craft already demon­strates a strong mar­ket demand for our prod­ucts.” These recent orders include 30 units for ZTO Express, one of the world’s largest logis­tics com­pa­nies.

Tian con­tin­ued, “Suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing the TC was a lengthy and rig­or­ous process and I must thank the review team and all my col­leagues for their painstak­ing efforts. This achieve­ment estab­lish­es a strong foun­da­tion for AutoFlight’s forth­com­ing large-scale com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.”

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Secur­ing TC Air­wor­thi­ness is vital for ensur­ing the safe­ty and mar­ket entry of the car­go elec­tric air­craft for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. The Car­ryAll, with a max­i­mum take-off weight of two tons, oper­ates autonomous­ly. 

“Its com­pli­ance ver­i­fi­ca­tion encom­passed var­i­ous aspects, includ­ing per­for­mance con­trol, sta­bil­i­ty, lift/thrust sys­tem, struc­tur­al strength/composite blades, bat­tery sys­tem, avion­ics sys­tem, elec­tri­cal sys­tem, and flight per­for­mance,” explains the release. “The thor­ough review process involved man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pli­ance inspec­tions and the wit­ness­ing of 46 major com­pli­ance ver­i­fi­ca­tion tests at the equip­ment lev­el, sys­tem lev­el and struc­tur­al com­po­nent lev­el.”

Also, the Car­ryAll pro­to­type has com­plet­ed eight major com­pli­ance tests, includ­ing plateau per­for­mance, data link and ground sta­tion func­tions, involv­ing 156 flights and exceed­ing a total flight dis­tance of 10,000 kms.

In Feb­ru­ary, Aut­oFlight demon­strat­ed the world’s first inter-city elec­tric air tax­i­flight between the south­ern Chi­nese cities of Shen­zhen and Zhuhai. Pros­per­i­ty com­plet­ed the mile­stone by autonomous­ly fly­ing the 31 mile route from Shen­zhen to Zhuhai. The jour­ney across the Pearl Riv­er Delta took just 20 min­utes, a trip that would require three hours by car. This achieve­ment marks the world’s first pub­lic flight of an eVTOL air­craft on a cross-sea and inter-city route.

The route between Shen­zhen and Zhuhai is part of a future air traf­fic route planned by the region­al gov­ern­ment as it devel­ops its ‘low-alti­tude econ­o­my.’ This will see the open­ing of thou­sands of ver­ti­ports and hun­dreds of eVTOL air routes across the Greater Bay Area in south­ern Chi­na. The flight took place in one of the world’s most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas, home to around 86 mil­lion peo­ple, and in an air­space that bor­ders mul­ti­ple inter­na­tion­al air­ports, includ­ing Hong Kong, Shen­zhen and Macau. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.autoflight.com/en/

(Images: Aut­oFlight)

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