UAE Flying Taxi Facility to Create 2,000 Aviation Jobs

Cal­i­for­nia-based fly­ing taxi man­u­fac­tur­er, Odys Avi­a­tion, is set­ting up a facil­i­ty in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE), to man­u­fac­ture its air­craft, reports arabianbusiness.com. The HQ will be based in Abu Dhabi, where the facil­i­ty is to include a high-vol­ume assem­bly and main­te­nance plant.

Odys which is devel­op­ing hybrid VTOLs for both region­al and short-haul dis­tances, has joined the UAE’s ‘NextGen FDI’ Pro­gram that pro­vides pio­neer­ing busi­ness­es in high-poten­tial sec­tors, with the mar­ket-entry fun­da­men­tals to launch and then scale their oper­a­tions in the Arab Emi­rates.

Designed for pas­sen­gers, car­go and emer­gency ser­vices, Odys Aviation’s air­craft will have an all-elec­tric propul­sion capa­ble of fly­ing for 320km, with a hybrid-elec­tric range of more than 1,200km. This means, the air­craft has the poten­tial to reduce car­bon emis­sions on pan-GCC air trav­el by up to 76 per­cent, and pro­vide a zero-car­bon trav­el alter­na­tive for all jour­neys across the coun­try. Odys plans to launch a full-scale pro­to­type in 2025, with the air­craft enter­ing into ser­vice in 2027.

The move will cre­ate more than 2,000 direct and indi­rect jobs in the coun­try and would result in the export of the first air­craft man­u­fac­tured under the “Made in the UAE” cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Odys has already received pre-orders for more than 1,200 air­craft from oper­a­tors and air­lines around the world. Ear­li­er this month it was announced Abu Dhabi-based Knight­hood Glob­al invest­ed in Odys Avi­a­tion.

Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zey­ou­di, Min­is­ter of State for For­eign Trade, com­ment­ed, “We see sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for the oper­a­tion of Odys air­craft across the UAE in civil­ian, car­go and civ­il defence activ­i­ties, and we look for­ward to devel­op­ing a new sus­tain­able, low-car­bon avi­a­tion sec­tor from clean ener­gy air trav­el through to advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and research and devel­op­ment capa­bil­i­ties.”

He con­tin­ued, “Our NextGen FDI pro­gram is help­ing to trans­form the UAE’s advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and indus­tri­al sec­tor and cre­ate new clus­ters of excel­lence around world-chang­ing ideas.”

James Dor­ris, Co-Founder and CEO at Odys Avi­a­tion, remarked, “The UAE is the per­fect mar­ket for Odys to estab­lish a foot­print and we are excit­ed to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with UAE enti­ties to devel­op an advanced air mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. By bring­ing Odys to the UAE, we aim to part­ner with the exist­ing strong avi­a­tion sec­tor and lever­age local sup­ply chain oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

He added, “Our air­craft will also mean brand new oppor­tu­ni­ties for domes­tic air con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the UAE and region­al fly­ing between key GCC cities, cut­ting door-to-door times in half, com­pared to con­ven­tion­al trav­el options today, and doing so in a car­bon friend­ly way.”

James Dor­ris

Tweet

https://twitter.com/ThaniAlZeyoudi/status/1662010921231736832

Launched in 2022, NextGenF­DI aims to sup­port the growth of UAE’s econ­o­my by enabling rapid incor­po­ra­tion process­es to speed up licens­ing, facil­i­tat­ing the issuance of bulk or gold­en visas, accel­er­at­ing bank­ing ser­vices, and pro­vid­ing com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial lease incen­tives for advanced tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies seek­ing to relo­cate to the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

As part of the arrange­ment, James Hogan, Chair­man of Knight­hood Glob­al, and Camiel Eurlings, a Part­ner of the avi­a­tion, trav­el and tourism advi­so­ry firm, will also serve on the Advi­so­ry Board of Odys Avi­a­tion, shar­ing their com­mer­cial expe­ri­ence and deep avi­a­tion exper­tise to expand the organisation’s glob­al pres­ence.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.odysaviation.com/

https://www.moec.gov.ae/en/nextgenfdi

(News Source: www.arabianbusiness.com)

(Graph­ic images: Odys Avi­a­tion)