NEOM and Volocopter launch first electric air taxi flight in Saudi Arabia

NEOM, the sus­tain­able region­al devel­op­ment in north­west Sau­di Ara­bia, and Volo­copter have suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a series of air taxi test flights, mark­ing the first time an eVTOL air­craft has received a spe­cial flight autho­ri­sa­tion and per­formed test flights in the King­dom of Sau­di Ara­bia.

The flight test last­ed over a week and built on 18 months of col­lab­o­ra­tion between NEOM, the Gen­er­al Author­i­ty of Civ­il Avi­a­tion (GACA), and Volo­copter, with the aim of imple­ment­ing and scal­ing an elec­tric UAM ecosys­tem and test­bed in NEOM.

Groupe ADP and Volo­copter have col­lab­o­rat­ed to bring UAM to Paris, con­duct­ing flight tests with new elec­tric air taxis, or eVTOLs at the Pon­toise test­bed, and bring­ing all reg­u­la­tors and stake­hold­ers togeth­er since 2020.

Nadh­mi Al-Nasr, CEO of NEOM, said: “The suc­cess­ful test flight of a Volo­copter eVTOL is not just anoth­er mile­stone on the jour­ney towards the cre­ation of NEOM’s sus­tain­able mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion sys­tem – it is a tan­gi­ble exam­ple of NEOM as a glob­al accel­er­a­tor and incu­ba­tor of solu­tions to the world’s most press­ing chal­lenges.”

Abdu­laz­iz Al-Duailej, Pres­i­dent of GACA, said: “This safe and suc­cess­ful test flight rep­re­sents an impor­tant mile­stone of the Sau­di avi­a­tion sec­tor and anoth­er steady step towards achiev­ing the avi­a­tion sector’s strat­e­gy, through inno­va­tion and employ­ing emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies. It also con­firms GACA’s com­mit­ment to enabling the safe inte­gra­tion of inno­v­a­tive air trans­port pat­terns that improve the mobil­i­ty expe­ri­ence of indi­vid­u­als in urban areas.”

Chris­t­ian Bauer, CCO and CFO of Volo­copter, said: “As the first eVTOL air­craft to ever test in Sau­di Ara­bia, we are proud to have laid the ground­work for our future col­lab­o­ra­tion here in NEOM.”

The test cam­paign focused on the flight per­for­mance of the Volo­copter air­craft in local cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, as well as test­ing its inte­gra­tion into the local unmanned air­craft sys­tem traf­fic man­age­ment (UTM) sys­tem.

Volo­copter eVTOLs will be key to NEOM’s smart and sus­tain­able mul­ti­modal mobil­i­ty sys­tem, which will be pow­ered by 100% renew­able ener­gy gen­er­at­ed by solar and wind ener­gy sources. The test flight builds on NEOM’s EUR 175 mil­lion invest­ment and joint ven­ture with Volo­copter, which expects to obtain type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for its VoloC­i­ty air taxi in 2024.

In Decem­ber 2021, Volo­copter first part­nered with NEOM to design, imple­ment and oper­ate the world’s first bespoke pub­lic eVTOL mobil­i­ty sys­tem.

Volo­copter estab­lish­es joint ven­ture with NEOM in Sau­di Ara­bia to devel­op world’s first bespoke eVTOL mobil­i­ty sys­tem