Vertical Aerospace to work with Heathrow Airport on future of urban air mobility and providing easier access from across the UK

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has announced a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Heathrow Air­port to explore how its VA-X4 eVTOL air­craft could oper­ate there by the mid­dle of this decade.

The agree­ment between Heathrow — the UK’s largest and of the world’s busiest air­ports — and Ver­ti­cal is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for Britain’s zero-emis­sions avi­a­tion indus­try. Both par­ties will work close­ly to explore how this new tech­nol­o­gy can fit into exist­ing oper­a­tions at the air­port, build under­stand­ing of the reg­u­la­to­ry changes that would be required, max­imise poten­tial job oppor­tu­ni­ties and min­imise any poten­tial impacts on com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing the air­port.

Stephen Fitz­patrick, CEO and Founder of Ver­ti­cal, said: “Ver­ti­cal con­tin­ues to part­ner with world lead­ing organ­i­sa­tions such as Rolls-Royce, Hon­ey­well, Amer­i­can Air­lines, Vir­gin Atlantic, Bris­tow Group and Microsoft. This part­ner­ship is a big step for­ward as we try to get the UK to Net Zero by 2050. This announce­ment marks the start of an excit­ing rela­tion­ship that will help make eVTOLs fly­ing from Heathrow by the mid-2020s a real­i­ty.”

By work­ing togeth­er, Ver­ti­cal and Heathrow expect to help Britain main­tain its lead­ing posi­tion in sus­tain­able avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies and sup­port moves to a low car­bon econ­o­my to help meet the Gov­ern­men­t’s net zero ambi­tions to make the UK net zero by 2050.

With speeds of up to 200 mph, Ver­ti­cal’s pilot­ed eVTOL will be able to trans­port four pas­sen­gers in near silence from Heathrow to the City of Lon­don in 12 min­utes, with zero oper­at­ing emis­sions and at a cost sim­i­lar to a taxi.

This new agree­ment comes as inter­est in the future of urban air mobil­i­ty is grow­ing, with major air­lines already oper­at­ing at Heathrow keen to see the tech­nol­o­gy devel­op. Vir­gin Atlantic has already announced a part­ner­ship for the UK launch of an eVTOL net­work with Ver­ti­cal and con­di­tion­al pre-order options for up to 150 VA-X4s.

Chris Annetts, Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer of Heathrow, said: “We are delight­ed to be part­ner­ing with Ver­ti­cal, a glob­al cham­pi­on in emis­sions-free avi­a­tion. This emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy has the poten­tial to reduce con­ges­tion and pol­lu­tion on local roads, while pro­vid­ing pas­sen­gers with a best-in-class expe­ri­ence on the cut­ting edge of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy. We look for­ward to explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of zero-emis­sions flight togeth­er.”

Ver­ti­cal’s top-tier glob­al cus­tomers include Amer­i­can Air­lines, Vir­gin Atlantic, Avolon, Bris­tow Group, Ibero­jet and Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion. Through these rela­tion­ships, Ver­ti­cal believes it has the largest con­di­tion­al pre-order book in the eVTOL indus­try, of up to 1,350 air­craft worth $5.4billion.

Shai Weiss, CEO of Vir­gin Atlantic, added: “Today’s new part­ner­ship between Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and Heathrow Air­port is an excit­ing next step on the path­way to cre­at­ing the infra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port eVTOL oper­a­tions at our Heathrow hub.  We look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with both Ver­ti­cal and Lon­don Heathrow to trans­form the first and last 100-mile jour­ney of pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling through Heathrow.”