Munich Airport and Nuremberg Airport to become hubs for Lilium’s planned regional air mobility network in Southern Germany

Lil­i­um has con­firmed Munich Air­port and Nurem­berg Air­port will become hubs for its pro­posed region­al air mobil­i­ty net­work in the state of Bavaria, Ger­many.

This news adds to the Ger­man start up’s ear­li­er announce­ments last year, in plan­ning region­al hubs in North-Rhine West­phalia — the coun­try’s most pop­u­lous state — and Flori­da, USA. Based on agree­ments in prin­ci­ple with land­ing site oper­a­tors, Lil­i­um has already under­tak­en exten­sive prepara­to­ry work; cov­er­ing site search, struc­tur­al imple­men­ta­tion and air­space inte­gra­tion, use cas­es and routes.

This part­ner­ship will offer all-elec­tric con­nec­tions, with each being able to trans­port six pas­sen­gers between dif­fer­ent loca­tions across the south of Ger­many.

Daniel Wie­gand, CEO of Lil­i­um, said: “I am very pleased with our suc­cess­ful part­ner­ship with the two air­ports. Of course, we are doing every­thing we can to bring our all-elec­tric and ultra-qui­et air­line ser­vice to our home base of Bavaria, as well as to link Munich and Nurem­berg even more close­ly with neigh­bor­ing cities and regions.

“We also want to offer a ser­vice for every­one in the South­ern Ger­man region, with attrac­tive prices and great time sav­ings for all trav­el­ers. Munich and Nurem­berg air­ports are key mobil­i­ty hubs that we will con­nect with large and small cities through­out the region over time.” 

Last month, Lil­i­um announced its first ser­i­al air­craft — the sev­en-seater Lil­i­um Jet. It has a range of more than 250km and a cruise speed of 280 km/h, with zero oper­at­ing emis­sions.

It has been in devel­op­ment since 2019 and received its CRI-A01 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis from EASA last year. The first air­craft is expect­ed to come off the pro­duc­tion line next year, with capac­i­ty for six pas­sen­gers and a pilot.

Jost Lam­mers, CEO of Franz-Josef-Strauss Air­port Munich, wel­comes Lil­i­um’s com­mit­ment. He said: “Improv­ing the con­nec­tiv­i­ty of Munich Air­port will be one of our most impor­tant future goals, once the reper­cus­sions of the pan­dem­ic have been over­come. We look for­ward to wel­com­ing more effi­cient links between the air­port and region­al and long-dis­tance rail ser­vices.”

Michael Hupe, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Albrecht Dür­er Air­port Nurem­berg, added: “The peo­ple and com­pa­nies of the Nurem­berg Met­ro­pol­i­tan Region demand mobil­i­ty. As a trans­porta­tion hub and north­ern Bavari­a’s gate­way to the world, we have estab­lished many oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple to trav­el here.

“It is impor­tant to pro­mote and estab­lish new forms of sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty at our loca­tion. Since sev­er­al trans­port cor­ri­dors meet in Nurem­berg, many ground-based trans­port sys­tems are heav­i­ly con­gest­ed. This gives the loca­tion enor­mous poten­tial for such an inno­v­a­tive prod­uct.” 

Com­ment­ing on this announce­ment, Flo­ri­an Her­rmann, Bavar­i­an State Min­is­ter, said: “eVTOL air­craft are a fas­ci­nat­ing and promis­ing addi­tion to the mobil­i­ty of the future and thus are trig­ger­ing com­plete­ly new plan­ning and solu­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties. We there­fore sup­port efforts to add this par­tic­u­lar­ly envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble dimen­sion to air mobil­i­ty.

“With the Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive Bavaria as part of the High-Tech Agen­da Plus, we are mak­ing 100 mil­lion euros avail­able in the com­ing years for research and devel­op­ment for new forms of urban air mobil­i­ty. The Bavar­i­an state gov­ern­ment sees great poten­tial for qui­et, emis­sion-free and fast mobil­i­ty in opti­mized net­work­ing of indi­vid­ual trans­port sys­tems.”