Spirit AeroSystems to develop wings of Airbus’ CityAirbus NextGen eVTOL aircraft as part of new agreement

Air­bus has signed an agree­ment with Spir­it AeroSys­tems through its sub­sidiary to devel­op the wings of its CityAir­bus NextGen eVTOL pro­to­type air­craft.

The CityAir­bus NextGen is equipped with fixed wings, a V‑shaped tail, and eight elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered pro­pellers as part of its dis­trib­uted propul­sion sys­tem. The pro­to­type is being devel­oped to fly with an 80km oper­a­tional range and reach a cruise speed of 120 km/h. The first flight is planned for 2023.

This part­ner­ship will also sup­port Air­bus’ explo­ration of dis­rup­tive air­craft design while com­ply­ing with the most strin­gent reg­u­la­tions.

Jörg Müller, Head of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) at Air­bus, said: “The part­ner­ship with Spir­it AeroSys­tems is an impor­tant step for the devel­op­ment of CityAir­bus NextGen and its wings are key struc­tur­al com­po­nents for flight effi­cien­cy.

“To build this vehi­cle, we are proud to work with Spir­it as a strate­gic part­ner who ben­e­fits from a proven track record in this field, and exten­sive expe­ri­ence in com­po­nent qual­i­ty and air­wor­thi­ness.”

Spir­it AeroSys­tems will man­u­fac­ture CityAir­bus NextGen’s wings in Belfast, North­ern Ire­land. Both part­ners’ ambi­tion is to achieve a min­i­mum weight solu­tion while ensur­ing the high­est lev­els of safe­ty.

The struc­tur­al con­cept of the eVTOL’s fixed wings will be able to trans­mit the relat­ed aero­dy­nam­ic loads while being opti­mised for the right bal­ance between hov­er and cruise effi­cien­cy. CityAir­bus NextGen’s dis­trib­uted propul­sion sys­tem will con­tribute to reduc­ing the influ­ence of air tur­bu­lence.

Spir­it AeroSys­tems is one of the world’s largest sup­pli­ers of aerostruc­tures, and builds on years of man­u­fac­tur­ing exper­tise in major air­craft com­po­nents and archi­tec­ture solu­tions. Its long­stand­ing rela­tion­ship with Air­bus includes the pro­vi­sion of ful­ly inte­grat­ed wings and wing ele­ments for mul­ti­ple Air­bus com­mer­cial air­craft.

Air­bus revealed the next-gen ver­sion of the CityAir­bus at its first Air­Sum­mit in Sep­tem­ber. This lat­est part­ner­ship with Spir­it AeroSys­tems fol­lows on from a sim­i­lar agree­ment being announced in Novem­ber 2021, when Air­bus signed a tri­lat­er­al agree­ment with Thales and Diehl Aero­space for the joint devel­op­ment of the flight con­trol com­put­ers.

Thales will be respon­si­ble for the pri­ma­ry com­put­ing sys­tem of the CityAir­bus NextGen, while Diehl is devel­op­ing the sec­ondary flight con­trol com­put­er.