Leading industry names heading to AIRTAXI World Congress, which will include live outdoor demonstration of eVTOL air taxi

eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers will join indus­try pro­fes­sion­als from air­ports, cities and civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ties at Lon­don Heathrow’s Hilton Hotel for the AIRTAXI World Con­gress next month, as the world starts to resume face-to-face net­work­ing events for the first time in more than 12 months.

Organ­ised by Glob­al Trav­el Invest­ments, AIRTAXI World Con­gress will take place from Octo­ber 12th-14th and is described as the world’s first ver­ti­cal air show ded­i­cat­ed for the air taxis and urban eVTOL air­craft.

Over the two days, there will be main stage pre­sen­ta­tion ses­sions which includes spe­cif­ic work­shops, pan­el and round­table dis­cus­sions and spot­lights on par­tic­u­lar areas in the world which could be the first to adopt urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices.

There will also be sep­a­rate rooms avail­able for com­pa­nies to pro­mote their prod­ucts and ser­vices, as well as a vir­tu­al ver­ti­cal air­show where eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers can show­case their tech­nolo­gies in a 3D set­up. Addi­tion­al­ly, an out­door pre­sen­ta­tion has also been planned with more details to be announced clos­er to the event.

Com­pa­nies already attend­ing include Air­bus, Volo­copter, EHang, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, EASA, Hon­ey­well, Roland Berg­er, EmbraerX, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty and Sky­ports.

The Mas­ter of Cer­e­mo­ny for AIRTAXI World Con­gress will be Ian Kiely, who is an award-win­ning UAV spe­cial­ist and devel­op­er with a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in air taxis, eVTOL and drone con­nec­tiv­i­ty. He was recent­ly an adju­di­ca­tor for the Galileo Mas­ters and is work­ing with the EU on the future of drone tech­nolo­gies.

On the first day, Kiely will set the scene on the indus­try with a focus on air­taxis, unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment (UTM) sys­tems and the con­nec­tiv­i­ty and space need­ed for a seam­less trans­port sys­tem. Drone man­u­fac­tur­ers and UTM devel­op­ers will then talk about the cur­rent chal­lenges and solu­tions, before key reg­u­la­tors from EASA will pro­vide a work­shop enti­tled ‘Reg­u­la­tion to sup­port eVTOL air­craft’.

The final ses­sion before the first net­work­ing break is called ‘How do we design the Cities’, which focus­es on how urban areas are designed in rela­tion to ver­ti­ports. It will also look at how air­lines and air­ports can get onboard with imple­ment­ing ver­ti­ports, and how they will help with park­ing for pas­sen­gers before board­ing a flight.

The con­ver­sa­tion about ver­ti­ports will then con­tin­ue with Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, who talks about infra­struc­ture require­ments, test­ing the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures, noise lev­els, vehi­cles and pas­sen­gers’ pro­cess­ing. He will also go into detail about the prac­ti­cal deploy­ment of eVTOL air­craft ver­ti­ports to enable the indus­try to grow, and the trade-offs between ver­ti­port design and func­tion­al­i­ty for the pur­pos­es of cost-effec­tive­ness and deliv­er­abil­i­ty.

Man­ag­ing the air­space for eVTOLs and mak­ing all air­space users hap­py is the top­ic of the next pre­sen­ta­tion, which will be deliv­ered by NATS, the UK’s lead­ing provider of air traf­fic con­trol ser­vices. There will be a round­table work­shop fea­tur­ing stake­hold­ers on the ground, such as reg­u­la­tors and UTM man­agers, before Dubai’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and Roads and Trans­port Author­i­ty will pro­vide a spot­light on the coun­try.

This will include talk­ing about its cur­rent reg­u­la­tions to sup­port eVTOL air­craft, the infra­struc­ture impli­ca­tions and impact on city/land plan­ning and what strate­gies, test­ing and val­i­da­tion needs to be under­tak­en by local offi­cials, air­ports, busi­ness­es, devel­op­ers and urban plan­ners.

Fol­low­ing this will be a spot­light on Sin­ga­pore, which will focus on the Smart Nation Dig­i­tal Gov­ern­ment Group poli­cies, imple­men­ta­tion of projects for the city-state and dis­cus­sion of fac­tors of fly­ing taxis for urban Sin­ga­pore and what lessons have been learnt.

The final ses­sion of day one will be pan­el dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Groupe ADP. They will talk about air­port’s eVTOL inte­gra­tions, which will include ques­tions such as: What eVTOL air­craft will add to air­port oper­a­tions, do we allow for mul­ti­ple land­ing sites on one air­port and does the air­port invest in the devel­op­ment or it is left to the oper­a­tors?

Oth­er points raised will be the inte­gra­tion of the oper­a­tion net­work and air­space man­age­ment as well as ground infra­struc­ture and pas­sen­gers and oper­a­tors’ ser­vices, accom­mo­dat­ing mul­ti­ple types of air­craft with vary­ing per­for­mance capa­bil­i­ties and ensur­ing UAM oper­a­tions have no impact on the exist­ing air­port flow.

On the sec­ond day the first pre­sen­ta­tion will be from What3words, which will be how to iden­ti­fy land­ing sights and build in pas­sen­ger drone com­mu­ni­ca­tions into UTM sys­tems. There will also be a pre­sen­ta­tion about the envi­ron­ment con­sid­er­a­tions before a spot­light on Ire­land, with case stud­ies on Dublin and Manna.aero.

Alti­tude Angel will then talk about man­ag­ing drone maps in cities and how they will be inte­grat­ed into UTM sys­tems. There will be the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear more from eVTOL OEMs about their future plans and cur­rent progress of their own air­craft, as well as a dis­cus­sion with major auto­mo­tive man­u­fac­tur­ers to dis­cuss the math­e­mat­ics of build­ing cars ver­sus air taxis.

The final pre­sen­ta­tion of day two will be address­ing the unknowns; answer­ing ques­tions such as whether the use of eVTOL air­craft cre­ate sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­els going for­ward, whether they will replace heli­copters and become a mass trans­porta­tion sys­tem.

On day three, there will be a live demon­stra­tion of an air taxi flight at the test site. No details have yet been revealed about the iden­ti­ty of the man­u­fac­tur­er.

Reg­is­tra­tion as a del­e­gate will cost £1,499. This includes access to the three-day pro­gramme and the air taxi demo, all pre­sen­ta­tions via USB, the abil­i­ty to sched­ule pre-arranged meet­ings, net­work­ing recep­tion and exclu­sive hos­pi­tal­i­ty. For spon­sor­ship, it will cost £2,999 and includ­ed will be a demon­stra­tion stand, a 15-minute break­out pre­sen­ta­tion, com­pa­ny lit­er­a­ture in del­e­gate packs and pop-up ban­ners in the sum­mit hall.

As well as AIRTAXI World Con­gress, Glob­al Trav­el Invest­ments also organ­is­es Air­line Net­work­ing and GTI Avi­a­tion Train­ing.

For more infor­ma­tion about the event, speak­ers and agen­da, vis­it https://www.airtaxiworldcongress.com/