Overair and Hanwha Ink three partnerships to deliver 20 aircraft at Seoul ADEX 2023

Overair yes­ter­day announced that the com­pa­ny and its strate­gic part­ner, Han­wha Sys­tems, have signed a let­ter of intent (LOI) and two mem­o­ran­da of under­stand­ing (MOU) with key Kore­an part­ners to accel­er­ate AAM in the region.

These agree­ments were signed joint­ly dur­ing pub­lic cer­e­monies at this week’s Seoul Inter­na­tion­al Aero­space and Defense Exhi­bi­tion (ADEX), attend­ed by defence offi­cials from more than 57 coun­tries.

Overair CEO Ben Tign­er said: “Overair is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing South Korea’s AAM ambi­tions through part­ner­ships like these that ensure all facets of the ecosys­tem are con­sid­ered. Local gov­ern­ments, oper­a­tors, and infra­struc­ture providers alike will play an inte­gral role as we enter this new era of trans­porta­tion.

“We look for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with our part­ners at Han­wha Sys­tems on these excit­ing new projects, which will bring real ben­e­fits to the com­mu­ni­ties they impact and pro­vide a sol­id foun­da­tion to fur­ther AAM adop­tion across South­east Asia.”

A LOI for the pur­chase of 20 But­ter­fly air­craft was signed with HeliKo­rea, a lead­ing air trans­porta­tion com­pa­ny for Korea’s heli­copter indus­try. The air­craft will inte­grate seam­less­ly into HeliKorea’s cur­rent busi­ness mod­el and will be used for med­ical, exec­u­tive, and car­go trans­port, as well as fire­fight­ing, high-volt­age pow­er line inspec­tion, and oth­er appli­ca­tions. Overair will also pro­vide pilot and main­te­nance train­ing.

Overair’s MOU with South Kore­an con­struc­tion con­ver­gence inno­va­tor Dae­woo E&C estab­lish­es a plan to joint­ly devel­op a series of AAM net­works across East South Asian mar­kets.

The com­pa­nies will devel­op and imple­ment a con­cept of oper­a­tions (CONOPS), select local oper­a­tors and ver­ti­port sites, estab­lish urban air traf­fic man­age­ment (UATM) sys­tems, and engage with local avi­a­tion and gov­ern­ment author­i­ties to cre­ate a viable reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for AAM oper­a­tions. Dae­woo E&C will focus on ver­ti­port estab­lish­ment while Overair will pro­vide oper­a­tional guid­ance and air­craft inte­gra­tion exper­tise.

Final­ly, an MOU with the Kore­an Police aims to inte­grate AAM with­in the agency. The Police Department’s Human Resources Devel­op­ment Insti­tute will focus on devel­op­ing com­pre­hen­sive train­ing pro­grams to sup­port ver­ti­port devel­op­ment and AAM deploy­ment.

Both Overair and the Police Human Resources Devel­op­ment Insti­tute will col­lab­o­rate on AAM oper­a­tional train­ing with­in the organ­i­sa­tion, which includes ver­ti­port inte­gra­tion, pilot train­ing, main­te­nance, com­mu­ni­ty edu­ca­tion, and more.

All agree­ments will lever­age Han­wha Sys­tems’ exper­tise in UATM, soft­ware man­age­ment sys­tems, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, nav­i­ga­tion, sur­veil­lance, and infor­ma­tion hard­ware (CNSI equip­ment) and air trav­el infra­struc­ture. Han­wha Sys­tems will sup­port each project with sys­tems and oper­a­tional sup­port to ensure UATM cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and safe, effi­cient oper­a­tion.

This news fol­lows the company’s recent­ly announced MOU between Overair, Jeju Island, and Han­wha to bring an AAM ecosys­tem to the South Kore­an region.

Overair, Han­wha Sys­tems, and Jeju Province to col­lab­o­rate on Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Ecosys­tem