Poll figures revealed by Lilium show two thirds of respondents agree air travel needs to become sustainable

Lil­i­um has revealed fig­ures from a land­mark inter­na­tion­al sur­vey shows a pent up demand for clean avi­a­tion, with 65 per cent of con­sumers across the USA, the UK, France and Ger­many call­ing for change.

In a unique poll of 4,000 peo­ple, two-thirds (65%) of con­sumers said it is time for air trav­el to become sus­tain­able. Lil­i­um believes the results also reflect wide excite­ment about the prospect of new forms of trans­port.

Polled on a series of inno­v­a­tive trav­el meth­ods, 60 per cent said they would try elec­tric avi­a­tion, while 61 per cent specif­i­cal­ly said they would like to try eVTOL air­craft, with the demand strongest in Ger­many (64 per cent).

The fig­ures were released short­ly after the avi­a­tion world gath­ered at Farn­bor­ough Air Show, where Lil­i­um unveiled the full scale mod­el of its Lil­i­um Jet for the first time in the UK.

Sebastien Borel, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at Lil­i­um, said: “In four crit­i­cal mar­kets, this sur­vey shows that one thing is clear: peo­ple are ready for a new form of trans­port — one that’s more com­fort­able, con­ve­nient to access and meets their con­cerns on the envi­ron­ment. These num­bers under­line why Lil­i­um with more than 100 bind­ing orders leads the eVTOL mar­ket.”

He added: “While cus­tomers are demand­ing more sus­tain­able ways of trav­el – with cost, com­fort and con­ve­nience being impor­tant for them, region­al air mobil­i­ty is the key mar­ket pro­vid­ing high­er time sav­ing and bet­ter cost per mile. More­over, we learned from our find­ings that for those well versed with eVTOL’s poten­tial, the excite­ment around elec­tric avi­a­tion is even stronger. I believe that once our air­craft is in oper­a­tions com­mer­cial­ly, these num­bers we have seen in this sur­vey will increase.”

The research also revealed wide­spread con­cern over the impact on tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion. Sev­en­ty-three per cent said they were con­cerned about its con­tri­bu­tion to pol­lu­tion, with the pro­por­tion high­est in Ger­many (76 per cent). This state­ment was sim­i­lar­ly backed by two-thirds (67 per cent) of con­sumers in the US.

Across all mar­kets, 70 per cent also said they were con­cerned about the role of avi­a­tion in cli­mate change.

The sur­vey also high­light­ed the shift as a more sus­tain­ably mind­ed younger pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to make up more of the trav­el deci­sions based on how sus­tain­able it is. In the US, adults aged between 18–34 are 2.5 times more like­ly to focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty than those aged 55 and over when mak­ing trav­el deci­sions.

Trav­el Pref­er­ences

Respon­dents were also asked about the ways in which they would pre­fer to trav­el a jour­ney of rough­ly 100 miles; while cars rep­re­sent­ed the most pop­u­lar option, US respon­dents were most like­ly to opt for a flight as their sec­ond choice, choos­ing air trav­el over trains and oth­er meth­ods such as bus­es.

The most pop­u­lar sce­nar­ios among con­sumers for these jour­neys includ­ed ‘get­ting around while on hol­i­day’ (29 per cent), ‘explor­ing places with­in my coun­try’ (28 per cent) and ‘explor­ing near­by regions’ (23 per cent), with US respon­dents polling espe­cial­ly in favour of domes­tic trav­el.

Across all ter­ri­to­ries, cost was regard­ed as the most impor­tant fac­tor in mak­ing trav­el plans, with more than half (54%) rank­ing this as their top pri­or­i­ty.

How­ev­er, this was close­ly fol­lowed by com­fort (46 per cent) and con­ve­nience of access (39 per cent), both areas in which low infra­struc­ture options such as eVTOL air­craft are able to out­do the alter­na­tives.

Sim­i­lar­ly, reflect­ing con­sumers’ ill-feel­ing towards tra­di­tion­al air trav­el, one-in-three (38 per cent) of con­sumers across all mar­kets said that ‘the amount of time spent at the air­port’ should be a key goal for improv­ing air trav­el.

eVTOL Aware­ness

The fig­ures also reveal the impor­tance of con­sumer aware­ness around new forms of trans­port.

Across all four coun­tries, 21 per cent of respon­dents said they were aware of eVTOL air­craft and how they could be used, and this group was con­sis­tent­ly the most enthu­si­as­tic about the future of avi­a­tion.

This group was over­whelm­ing­ly more like­ly to agree that elec­tric avi­a­tion is the future of air trav­el (67 per cent) when com­pared to those who said they had nev­er heard of eVTOL air­craft (39 per cent).

Sim­i­lar­ly, these eVTOL evan­ge­lists were also the most like­ly to say that they could see them­selves reg­u­lar­ly switch­ing from anoth­er mode of trans­porta­tion (67 per cent), sug­gest­ing that cur­rent lev­els of enthu­si­asm are set to build fur­ther as aware­ness grows.

Klaus Roewe, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Lil­i­um, said: “The find­ings from this research should serve as a wake-up call for Europe and else­where to boost sup­port for elec­tric avi­a­tion. The demand and excite­ment for this new form of trans­port is clear, and the poten­tial of elec­tric avi­a­tion to con­tribute to solv­ing the broad­er envi­ron­men­tal issues and chal­lenges in air trans­porta­tion is sig­nif­i­cant.

“Avi­a­tion is at the heart of the glob­al econ­o­my, whether it’s for tourism and trav­el or logistics—but equal­ly, it’s respon­si­ble for around 2.5 per cent of glob­al CO2 emis­sions. Our indus­try can do this in a sus­tain­able way, and we hope the US and Europe take the lead in estab­lish­ing elec­tric flight com­mer­cial­ly.”

The research sur­veyed a nation­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive audi­ence of 4,000 adults across the US, the UK, France and Ger­many. It was con­duct­ed between 10th and 16th July 2024 by insight agency Opini­um.