Middle East: “Odys Aviation, Sultanate of Oman, Sign Agreement to Launch Comprehensive AAM Ecosystem Programs” 

Odys, a dual-use avi­a­tion com­pa­ny devel­op­ing hybrid-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft, announced this week it has the signed an agree­ment with the Oman Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) and the Min­istry of Trans­port, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (MTCIT), to estab­lish the ‘Oman Proof of Con­cept Pro­gram’, a ful­ly inte­grat­ed Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) ecosys­tem demon­stra­tion, reports a press release

The project will show­case Odys’ full-scale Laila air­craft, designed for VTOL oper­a­tions with extend­ed range, high pay­load capac­i­ty and advanced autonomous capa­bil­i­ties. The oper­a­tional launch is sched­uled for ear­ly next year. 

The pro­gram is to amal­ga­mate Odys Avi­a­tion, Oman’s reg­u­la­tors, glob­al­ly recog­nised tier-one AAM com­pa­nies and a select group of part­ners and end users to val­i­date the deploy­ment of long-range, hybrid-elec­tric VTOL air­craft in live oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments. 

The release explains, “By lever­ag­ing Oman’s pro­gres­sive reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion under the JARUS/SORA frame­work, the project will serve as one of the world’s most com­pre­hen­sive blue­prints for the roll­out of AAM infra­struc­ture, pol­i­cy and oper­a­tions.” 

His Excel­len­cy Eng. Naif bin Ali Al-Abri, Pres­i­dent of the Oman Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, com­ment­ed, “This part­ner­ship rep­re­sents a piv­otal step in the tra­jec­to­ry of our civ­il avi­a­tion sec­tor. It comes with­in the frame­work of the nation­al agen­da to pro­mote inno­va­tion and embrace the lat­est advanced avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies, in align­ment with the goals of Oman Vision 2040.” 

He con­tin­ued, “Through this pio­neer­ing pro­gram, the Sul­tanate is not only prepar­ing its infra­struc­ture and econ­o­my for the future of air mobil­i­ty, but is also con­tribut­ing to set­ting inter­na­tion­al stan­dards and shap­ing the future of advanced avi­a­tion at both region­al and glob­al lev­els.”

Odys Air­craft

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the CAA, the pro­gram is to pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to tri­al var­i­ous oper­at­ing reg­u­la­tions includ­ing the ICAO-derived Spe­cif­ic Oper­a­tional Risk Assess­ment pro­to­type reg­u­la­tion, at mul­ti­ple Spe­cif­ic Assur­ance and Integri­ty Lev­els, to enable the con­tin­ued safe advance­ment of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Reg­u­la­tions. 

This marks a piv­otal step in Odys’ inter­na­tion­al expan­sion, with Oman serv­ing as the prov­ing ground for a repeat­able glob­al play­book in oth­er ear­ly-adopter mar­kets. 

Vin­cent Frascogna, VP of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for Odys Avi­a­tion, remarked, “Air­craft OEM, oper­a­tors, oil and gas enti­ties, ver­ti­ports, auton­o­my, reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight and more, will all be com­ing togeth­er in a real-world set­ting. The Oman ini­tia­tive will estab­lish a new bench­mark for how advanced air mobil­i­ty will move from con­cept to com­mer­cial deploy­ment and is set­ting the stan­dard for how advanced avi­a­tion will scale glob­al­ly.” 

A major dif­fer­ence being, this project “will val­i­date end-to-end AAM oper­a­tions with cross-sec­tor cus­tomers across mul­ti­ple high-val­ue use cas­es includ­ing oil and gas pipeline inspec­tions, civ­il defence appli­ca­tions includ­ing emer­gency response and search and res­cue, emer­gency med­ical logis­tics, nation­al defence and infra­struc­ture and logis­tics includ­ing long-range inspec­tion, car­go move­ments and just-in-time sup­ply chain sup­port,” con­tin­ues the release. 

Vin­cent Frascogna

It con­cludes, “The pro­gram is to pro­vide part­ners with mea­sur­able mile­stones, includ­ing suc­cess­ful VTOL take­offs and land­ings, com­plet­ed flights of vary­ing ranges, com­mer­cial­ly viable pay­load deliv­ery to remote and off­shore loca­tions, inte­gra­tion with exist­ing heli­copter oper­a­tions and devel­op­ment of ver­ti­port and sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture such as charg­ing.” 

Upon com­ple­tion of the ini­tial sched­ule, Odys expects to announce fur­ther expan­sions includ­ing addi­tion­al part­ners, longer range and increased pay­load mis­sions. 

For more infor­ma­tion

www.odysaviation.com

(Top image: James Dor­ris, CEO, Odys Avi­a­tion, H.E. Eng. Naif bin Ali Al Abri, Pres­i­dent of the Oman Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, H.E. Eng. Khamis bin Mohammed Al-Shamakhi, Under­sec­re­tary of Trans­port, MTCIT)

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