MIDDLE EAST: SALAAM.earth and FlyNow Host Roundtable with NIDC on Flying Taxi Testing in Saudi Arabia

SALAAM.earth (Sky Alliance for Auto­mat­ed Air Mobil­i­ty) and Fly­Now Ara­bia Ltd host­ed a closed-door round­table in Riyadh, with key gov­ern­ment and indus­try stake­hold­ers dis­cussing the devel­op­ment
of an oper­a­tional test­ing site for next-gen­er­a­tion air mobil­i­ty sys­tems in Sau­di Ara­bia.

The ses­sion was sup­port­ed by the Min­istry of Indus­try and Min­er­al Resources and the Nation­al Indus­tri­al Devel­op­ment Cen­tre (NIDC), with par­tic­i­pa­tion from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Gen­er­al Author­i­ty of Civ­il Avi­a­tion (GACA), the Min­istry of Inte­ri­or (MOI), and the Roy­al Com­mis­sion for Riyadh City (RCRC).

The round­table focused on enabling real-world test­ing, val­i­da­tion and future deploy­ment of auto­mat­ed air mobil­i­ty tech­nolo­gies in the King­dom, sup­port­ing Sau­di Arabia’s ambi­tion to become a glob­al leader in AAM as part of Vision 2030.

eCopter to Be First Air­craft Test­ed in Sau­di Sand­box

A key mile­stone of the ini­tia­tive is the planned flight test­ing of eCopter, devel­oped by Fly­Now Avi­a­tion, a sub­sidiary of Fly­Now Ara­bia Ltd., and which is posi­tioned to become one of the first Sau­di-built air­craft.

FlyNow’s eCopter is an elec­tric air­craft designed to reduce urban traf­fic con­ges­tion by enabling fast, point-to-point air mobil­i­ty.

It can fly up to 50 km at speeds of 130 km/h, car­ry­ing up to two pas­sen­gers or 200 kg of car­go. Ful­ly elec­tric, it pro­duces zero emis­sions and offers oper­at­ing costs com­pa­ra­ble to a reg­u­lar taxi ride, mak­ing it an afford­able option for every­day mobil­i­ty.

Beyond air taxi ser­vices, the eCopter also sup­port appli­ca­tions in fire­fight­ing, med­ical evac­u­a­tion and car­go oper­a­tions. While eCopter will be the first air­craft test­ed, the sand­box is designed as an open plat­form that will sup­port test­ing and inte­gra­tion of next-gen­er­a­tion air­craft from oth­er com­pa­nies.

Build­ing an Inte­grat­ed AAM Ecosys­tem

SALAAM.earth brings togeth­er key part­ners across the AAM val­ue chain, includ­ing Fly­Now Ara­bia (eCopter plat­form), Sky­roads (air traf­fic man­age­ment), GeoT­ech (geospa­tial sys­tems), Uni­fied Avi­a­tion (ver­ti­ports), IAAM.Trust (dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty lay­er), MAKONIS (AI & infra­struc­ture inte­gra­tion), Quadron (cyber­se­cu­ri­ty), and GEM e‑Aviation (oper­a­tions and coor­di­na­tion).

Togeth­er, these part­ners form the foun­da­tion of a ful­ly inte­grat­ed AAM ecosys­tem com­bin­ing air­craft, infra­struc­ture, and dig­i­tal sys­tems.

Yvonne Win­ter, Pres­i­dent of SALAAM.earth, said: “This is a his­toric moment for auto­mat­ed air mobil­i­ty in Sau­di Ara­bia. In close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Sau­di gov­ern­ment, we are mov­ing from vision to real­i­ty with a
clear goal: improv­ing people’s dai­ly lives by tack­ling traf­fic con­ges­tion through a com­plete­ly new form of trans­porta­tion that is safe and afford­able for every­one.”

Dr. Samer Aljabari, Senior Aero­space Advi­sor of the Nation­al Indus­tri­al Devel­op­ment Cen­ter (NIDC), added:
“Auto­mat­ed air mobil­i­ty tech­nolo­gies rep­re­sent a strate­gic oppor­tu­ni­ty for Sau­di Arabia’s indus­tri­al future. Col­lab­o­ra­tion across pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors is essen­tial to build­ing a glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive ecosys­tem and estab­lish­ing the King­dom as a leader in AAM under Vision 2030.”

SALAAM.earth (Sky Alliance for Auto­mat­ed Air Mobil­i­ty) is an inter­na­tion­al non-prof­it asso­ci­a­tion found­ed in 2024 to sup­port the coor­di­nat­ed devel­op­ment and oper­a­tional inte­gra­tion of Auto­mat­ed Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) ecosys­tems.

The alliance brings togeth­er air­craft devel­op­ers, infra­struc­ture providers, dig­i­tal air­space oper­a­tors, and tech­nol­o­gy part­ners to enable struc­tured imple­men­ta­tion of low-alti­tude auto­mat­ed air mobil­i­ty.

Fly­Now Ara­bia Ltd. is a Sau­di-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny focused on local­iz­ing the pro­duc­tion, deploy­ment, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft devel­oped by its sub­sidiary, Fly­Now Avi­a­tion GmbH (Aus­tria). These air­craft are designed to solve the grow­ing issues of urban con­ges­tion by offer­ing an on-demand, fast, and effi­cient mode of trans­port.

The eCopter fam­i­ly includes one- and two-seater mod­els for per­son­al trans­porta­tion, a car­go ver­sion with a 200 kg pay­load capa­ble of car­ry­ing a stan­dard Euro pal­let, as well as ded­i­cat­ed fire­fight­ing and res­cue mod­els.