“Vertical Aerospace Remains on Course to Fly at Osaka Expo”

The Marubeni Corporation’s press release announc­ing that LIFT’s HEXA eVTOL had com­plet­ed a suc­cess­ful and ear­ly demon­stra­tion flight this week at the six-month long Osa­ka Expo, remind­ed read­ers in the final para­graph that UK-based Ver­ti­cal Aero­space is to fly at the event also, but not until the show’s final month of Octo­ber.

This is fan­tas­tic news for Ver­ti­cal, if it occurs. 

After the company’s past mishap con­cern­ing its pro­pel­lors and the neg­a­tive media cov­er­age gained after the unfor­tu­nate crash back in August 2023, to achieve a series of demon­stra­tion flights at Osa­ka con­firms that the Bris­tol avi­a­tion com­pa­ny remains a series con­tender to take on its glob­al eVTOL rivals, espe­cial­ly after Joby announced recent­ly that it is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Vir­gin Atlantic for major routes around the UK, a part­ner­ship which Ver­ti­cal had orig­i­nal­ly signed up for four years ago, but was alleged­ly ditched last Novem­ber.

Ver­ti­cal announced in Jan­u­ary 2023 that Marubeni had reserved air­craft deliv­ery slots for 25 out of its up to 200 VX4 con­di­tion­al pre-orders, a deal ini­tial­ly men­tioned back in Sep­tem­ber 2021, mak­ing it the first cus­tomer from Asia to agree a pre-deliv­ery pay­ment. The under­stand­ing also includ­ed com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions such as route and net­work plan­ning, as well as infra­struc­ture require­ments.

There­fore, it appears Marubeni has remained loy­al to the orig­i­nal plan and is now assist­ing Ver­ti­cal with its demon­stra­tion flights between the Osa­ka ver­ti­port and anoth­er des­ig­nat­ed one out­side the venue. I won­der what the cost will be to ship the VX4 over to Osa­ka? 

Let us hope oth­er cus­tomers like Amer­i­can Air­lines, Avolon, Bris­tow and Ibero­jet also remain loy­al.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://vertical-aerospace.com/

(Images: Ver­ti­cal Aero­space)

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