South Korea: Jeju Island to launch flying taxi routes for tourists by 2025

koreaherald.com is pro­claim­ing an exclu­sive today (Thurs­day), by break­ing news that the resort of Jeju Island in South Korea, will be launch­ing fly­ing taxi flights for tourists by 2025. The first munic­i­pal­i­ty in the coun­try to gain com­mer­cial routes.

Jour­nal­ist, Kim Da-sol, says “an exec­u­tive who devised the idea” told him, the flight paths will con­nect the island’s pop­u­lar tourist spots with quick and acces­si­ble air mobil­i­ty with­in the next few years.

Jeju Island, togeth­er with South Kore­an avi­a­tion com­pa­ny, Ken­coa Aero­space and the Jeju Free Inter­na­tion­al City Devel­op­ment Cen­ter (JDC), have devised three types of flight routes across the island.

Pro­posed Flight Routes

The first con­nects Jeju Inter­na­tion­al Air­port to the island’s south­ern Mosupo area. This then links Moseulpo to Gapa­do and Mara­do. The third route moves along the east coast near Seongsan Ilchul­bong, a pop­u­lar tourist spot also known as Sun­rise Peak.

Chany­oung Chung, Head of UAM Strate­gic Busi­ness at Ken­coa Aero­space, com­ment­ed, “This would allow tourists to hop on an eVTOL air­craft at Jeju air­port; then direct­ly land at tourist spots to be trans­ferred to wait­ing air taxis near­by. The time frame will be dur­ing 2025.”

Jeju Spe­cial Self-Gov­ern­ing Province also plans to con­struct var­i­ous ver­ti­ports at pop­u­lar large-scale hotels. South Korea is a world leader of the grow­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) move­ment.

There­fore, Jeju’s aim of deploy­ing tourist air trans­porta­tion is quite fea­si­ble when Seoul City is already plan­ning tri­als for a UAM route that con­nects Gim­po Inter­na­tion­al Air­port to cen­tral Yongsan-gu.

Chany­oung Chung

Chung con­tin­ued, “Fly­ing an eVTOL along the Island’s coast faces less reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges com­pared to an air taxi in Seoul, where flights are restrict­ed by gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions.” Accord­ing to the Trans­port Min­istry, major dis­tricts in the city and the air­space along the Han Riv­er are present­ly no-fly zones.

He added, “Jeju works as a per­fect test­bed and the best loca­tion to deliv­er UAM. Geo­graph­i­cal fea­tures along the coast are less com­pli­cat­ed and estab­lish­ing ver­ti­ports on the sea can also work.”

Mean­while, the Trans­port Min­istry has sub­mit­ted its draft of a bill that forms require­ments and reg­u­la­tions for UAM. It is the first of its kind in the world, accord­ing to koreaherald.com. If approved by the South Kore­an Nation­al Assem­bly, it will become the first coun­try to have spe­cial reg­u­la­tions specif­i­cal­ly for UAM.

The bill pro­pos­es to sep­a­rate Urban Air Mobil­i­ty from the legal­i­ties of gen­er­al avi­a­tion. For exam­ple, eVTOLs would be advised not to fly with­in the flight area of heli­copters, which is around 450 metres above ground. The rule for UAM could be low­er at 300 metres. 

Under the government’s plan to com­mer­cialise UAM in cen­tral cities by 2025, the Trans­port Min­istry cre­at­ed a ‘K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge’ in Feb­ru­ary to coor­di­nate all of South Korea’s UAM-relat­ed activ­i­ties as part of its focus to enable new and emerg­ing avi­a­tion mar­kets. 

Jeju Island Tourist Flight Routes Ide­al for EHang

Major firms like SK Tele­com, Hyundai Motor Group and Han­wha Sys­tems have formed con­sor­tiums to par­tic­i­pate in the gov­ern­ment-led eval­u­a­tion and demon­stra­tion tests, which will take place in Gohe­ung, South Jeol­la Province from next year. 

The obvi­ous ques­tion: Which com­pa­ny or com­pa­nies may fly the Jeju Island routes? Sure­ly, the num­ber 1 choice, at present, is EHang. The com­pa­ny car­ried out var­i­ous flight tri­als over the island using its 216 pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing UAV as far back as two years ago.

(News Source: https://www.koreaherald.com)