Jetex and Volocopter sign agreement to define safe model for UAM

Pri­vate avi­a­tion leader Jetex and eVTOL pio­neer Volo­copter have signed a strate­gic part­ner­ship agree­ment to deploy and oper­ate per­ma­nent, eco­nom­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able, and inte­grat­ed urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) taxi take-off and land­ing infra­struc­ture and ser­vices for pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion.

The need for more afford­able, rapid and sus­tain­able trav­el are dri­ving this trend for­ward, with both com­pa­nies aim­ing to launch oper­a­tions from 2024.

Mia­mi, Sin­ga­pore and Paris are the pri­or­i­ty mar­kets where Jetex has already estab­lished its pres­ence and where sus­tain­able air taxi oper­a­tions are being mapped for pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion. 

Jetex and Volo­copter are research­ing the most pop­u­lar routes in these mar­kets to ensure seam­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty as well as organ­ic inte­gra­tion with the exist­ing air­port infra­struc­ture.

Jetex founder and CEO Adel Mar­di­ni said: “Today, we define the frame­work for the future of the UAM mar­ket, which is pro­ject­ed to grow from $2.6 bil­lion in 2020 to $9.1 bil­lion by 2030, and we are proud to work with our part­ners at Volo­copter on mak­ing this vision a real­i­ty.”

Since 2011, Volo­copter has been mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant strides toward bring­ing com­mer­cial air taxi ser­vices to cities around the world, hav­ing con­duct­ed crewed flights over the skies of Paris, the Unit­ed States, and Sin­ga­pore, where it unveiled its first full-scale air taxi ver­ti­port in Mari­na Bay back in 2019.

Volo­copter chief com­mer­cial offi­cer Chris­t­ian Bauer added: “Sign­ing this MOU with Jetex is an impor­tant first step toward a strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion to deploy sus­tain­able and inte­grat­ed UAM oper­a­tions as well as pas­sen­ger ser­vices.”

With Jetex lend­ing its pri­vate avi­a­tion know-how, both com­pa­nies say they look for­ward to unveil­ing the future of end-to-end air trav­el expe­ri­ence in key mar­kets around the world, that will be safe, sus­tain­able and con­ve­nient. 

In July 2021, Volo­copter and Sky­ports com­bined their exper­tise to con­duct a fea­si­bil­i­ty study with Malaysia Air­ports to exam­ine ver­ti­port solu­tions and con­sid­er fac­tors such as cus­tomer flow, demand and how urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions will be inte­grat­ed.

The Asia-Pacif­ic region is esti­mat­ed to have about 45 per cent of the advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket by 2035, which equates to $9.5 bil­lion USD.

Before that in April 2021, a full-size mod­el of Volocopter’s 2X eVTOL air taxi went on dis­play in Chi­na for the first time at Geely’s booth at the Shang­hai Inter­na­tion­al Auto­mo­bile Indus­try Exhi­bi­tion.