SkyDrive Completes Demonstration Flight Simulating Scenic Tours in Yamaguchi

Sky­Drive Inc. has suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed a demon­stra­tion flight of its SKYDRIVE (Mod­el SD-05) eVTOL air­craft at a test site in Yam­aguchi Pre­fec­ture, Japan.

The flight on July 13, 2026, at the Yam­aguchi Kirara Expo Memo­r­i­al Park sim­u­lat­ed scenic tour­ing oper­a­tions over the Seto Inland Sea. The remote­ly pilot­ed air­craft flew with­out pas­sen­gers or crew. In the first flight, it cov­ered approx­i­mate­ly 2 km in 6 min­utes and 20 sec­onds, reach­ing a max­i­mum speed of 86 km/h and alti­tude of 30 meters. The sec­ond flight cov­ered 1.9 km in 5 min­utes and 42 sec­onds, with a max­i­mum speed of 54 km/h and alti­tude of 25 meters.

The demon­stra­tion was observed by Yam­aguchi Gov­er­nor Tsug­u­masa Murao­ka, Vice Chair­per­son of the Yam­aguchi Pre­fec­tur­al Assem­bly Toru Kawano, and Suzu­ki Motor Cor­po­ra­tion Pres­i­dent Toshi­hi­ro Suzu­ki, SkyDrive’s pro­duc­tion part­ner.

Sky­Drive aims to inte­grate eVTOLs into tourism expe­ri­ences, enabling seam­less tran­si­tions from ground trans­port to aer­i­al tours. The test includ­ed a sim­u­lat­ed pas­sen­ger jour­ney from arrival by car at a ver­ti­port to flight depar­ture. The com­pa­ny sees poten­tial for eVTOLs in tourism, urban con­ges­tion relief, dis­as­ter response, and emer­gency med­ical ser­vices.

Sky­Drive CEO Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa described the flight as a mile­stone build­ing on pre­vi­ous tests in Toy­ota City, Osa­ka, and Tokyo. He empha­sized safe­ty as the top pri­or­i­ty while advanc­ing toward com­mer­cial oper­a­tions tar­get­ed for 2028.

“I was proud and delight­ed to see today the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of our demon­stra­tion flight here in Yam­aguchi, a mile­stone that builds upon our pre­vi­ous flights at the Expo 2025, Osa­ka Port, and Tokyo Big Sight.”

The demo flight was record­ed, and Sky­Drive has also released a clip show­ing a sim­u­lat­ed use case — focus­ing on the sim­plic­i­ty of swap­ping from a car to an eVTOL air­craft.

“In our sim­u­la­tion today, pas­sen­gers arrived by road, demon­strat­ing the seam­less, zero-wait time switch from road trans­port to eVTOL, a mod­el case that show­cas­es the poten­tial of next-gen­er­a­tion urban air mobil­i­ty to dri­ve tourism in var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions. Sky­Drive also looks for­ward to work­ing with our rail­way com­pa­ny part­ners to deliv­er the same seam­less tran­si­tions we saw today, show­ing how both road and rail trav­el will link smooth­ly into eVTOL depar­tures.”

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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