Manta Aircraft, SkyCab “Sign LOI to Integrate eV/STOL Aircraft for Regional Air Mobility”

Man­ta Air­craft, a com­pa­ny devel­op­ing the eV/STOL ANN Air­craft, recent­ly announced a strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sky­cab, a pri­vate plane flight-shar­ing ser­vice in Italy, reports a press release. 

The two com­pa­nies have signed a Let­ter of Intent (LOI) “to explore fur­ther appli­ca­tions and actu­al inte­gra­tion of eV/STOL air­craft for region­al air mobil­i­ty,” explains the release. 

While Sky­cab is present­ly con­nect­ing pri­vate pilots and pas­sen­gers for flights with con­ven­tion­al small-sized air­craft, Man­ta Air­craft’s eV/STOL capa­bil­i­ties, espe­cial­ly the 4–6 seat ver­sion ANN Plus, offers fur­ther pos­si­bil­i­ties, “most notably pro­vid­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty to exist­ing heli­pads along­side region­al air­ports and run­ways and places not bound by tra­di­tion­al infra­struc­ture lim­i­ta­tions,” con­tin­ues the release. 

The Man­ta Air­craft can take off and land in uncon­ven­tion­al loca­tions, giv­ing unprece­dent­ed acces­si­bil­i­ty, while enabling peo­ple to reach areas pre­vi­ous­ly inac­ces­si­ble. The craft pro­vides a flight range of approx­i­mate­ly 300 kilo­me­tres dur­ing ver­ti­cal take­off which then triples to up to 1,000 kilo­me­tres using a short run­way of just 300 metres. The costs are also low­er to oper­ate com­pared to a heli­copter.

Ini­tial­ly, the part­ner­ship will joint­ly devel­op flight routes and poten­tial pric­ing with­out the need for new infra­struc­ture or air traf­fic con­trol sys­tems. 

Insights into addi­tion­al routes will be analysed and devel­oped togeth­er. These will be pre­sent­ed to the local com­mu­ni­ty, pilots and region­al air­lines, as well as poten­tial users, where their feed­back can be used to improve the ser­vice. 

In the future, pur­chasers of Man­ta Air­craft eV/STOL air­craft will be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to realise oper­a­tional book­ing through Sky­cab.

Exam­ple of a Poten­tial Route — Rome to Capri

Train and Fer­ry: Aver­age Time: 3h, Aver­age Price: EUR70 per trip

Car and Fer­ry: Aver­age Time: 4h, Aver­age Price: EUR60 per trip

Heli­cop­er (no run­way on Capri): Aver­age Time: 55 min­utes, Aver­age Price: EUR5,000 per Trip

Man­ta Aircraft/SkyCab

Man­ta ANN eV/STOL ANN Plus (6‑seat ver­sion ANN Plus, 5 Pas­sen­gers)

Depar­ture: Rome Urbe Air­port — Arrival Capri Heli­pad

Dis­tance: 208 kilo­me­tres

Dura­tion: 50 min­utes

Price: EUR250, price per pas­sen­ger EUR50 (for 5 pas­sen­ger seats)

(Not includ­ed: Air­port tax­es at Capri, pri­vate pilot cost, Sky­cab ser­vice fee of 10 per­cent)

Back­ground

Found­ed in Italy in 2020, Sky­cab cur­rent­ly has a fleet of over 150 air­craft, more than 100 pilots and 700 avail­able routes. Cur­rent­ly, Sky­cab is focus­ing its efforts on devel­op­ing an online plat­form that allows users to effort­less­ly explore diverse flight options, com­pare prices and check real-time avail­abil­i­ty. 

The next step involves Sky­cab expand­ing its offer­ings to incor­po­rate the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty to pro­mote a new, more effi­cient and sus­tain­able form of air mobil­i­ty.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.mantaaircraft.com

www.skycab.io

(Top image: Man­ta eV/STOL ANN Air­craft)

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