Korean company Aerospace9 invests in Bye Aerospace and also places order for 300 electric aircraft

Seoul-based Aerospace9 has agreed to buy 300 of Bye Aero­space’s all- elec­tric air­craft and will also invest an undis­closed amount into the com­pa­ny.

In an announce­ment made ear­li­er this week, the air­craft order for Aerospace9 includes 150 two-seater eFly­er 2s, 148 four-seater eFly­er 4s and two Envoys, which is a larg­er, nine-seater mod­el. More details about the Envoy will be announced by Bye Aero­space before the end of the year.

The agree­ment also includes an option for Aerospace9 to pur­chase an addi­tion­al 100 air­craft, and the num­ber of future pur­chase agree­ments for Bye Aero­space’s all-elec­tric air­craft now stands at 711 units.

“We are extreme­ly hon­oured to share with Aerospace9 in this extra­or­di­nary announce­ment,” said George E. Bye, CEO of Bye Aero­space. “Bye Aero­space is on a rig­or­ous path to achieve FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion on our eFly­er 2 air­plane, and once that approval is obtained, to begin pro­duc­tion on our expand­ing back­log of orders.”

Bye Aero­space is in the process of seek­ing FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for the eFly­er 2 for the pro­fes­sion­al flight train­ing mis­sion, and the eFly­er 4 for air-taxi and advanced train­ing uses.

The com­pa­ny’s eFlyer2 demon­stra­tor entered the next stage of flight test­ing back in July, which focused on col­lect­ing flight enve­lope engi­neer­ing data for the three pro­pellers being con­sid­ered for the FAA-cer­ti­fied pro­duc­tion ver­sion.

Bye Aero­space says the ben­e­fits of the eFly­er air­craft include five-fold low­er oper­at­ing costs, no CO₂ emis­sions, and decreased noise. The eFly­er will elim­i­nate the release of mil­lions of met­ric tons of CO₂ each year for flight train­ing alone.

Oth­er com­pa­nies which have also invest­ed in the eFly­er fam­i­ly includes Sky­borne Air­line Acad­e­my, which took on six eFlyer2s and four eFlyer4s ear­li­er this year.

Seunghyuk Cha, Chair­man of Aerospace9, said: “This invest­ment is not just a pur­chase con­tract, it is a very mean­ing­ful con­tract that cre­ates an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for Asia. Our com­pa­ny has a very impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ty in the avi­a­tion indus­try as a new strate­gic part­ner of Bye Aero­space.”

Accord­ing to a press release, Aerospace9 is exit­ing stealth mode and build­ing a team of high­ly expe­ri­enced aero­space vet­er­ans. It says it will ‘chal­lenge the new-gen­er­a­tion avi­a­tion indus­try based on infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy as it devel­ops and sells var­i­ous avi­a­tion indus­try prod­ucts to the Asian mar­kets’.