Vertical Flight Society’s latest competition asks students to design an eVTOL aircraft for passengers with reduced mobility

A request for pro­pos­als (RFP) for the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s 39th Annu­al Stu­dent Design Com­pe­ti­tion has been pub­lished, which is ask­ing stu­dents to design an eVTOL air­craft elec­tric which accom­mo­dates pas­sen­gers with a broad spec­trum of mobil­i­ty dif­fi­cul­ties or oth­er dis­abil­i­ties for urban air mobil­i­ty mis­sions.

Enti­tled ‘eVTOL Air Taxi for Pas­sen­gers with Reduced Mobil­i­ty (PRM)’, the com­pe­ti­tion is spon­sored by Bell and open to stu­dents at uni­ver­si­ties across the world. A total of $12,500 in cash prizes are avail­able to the win­ning under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate teams.

In devel­op­ing this RFP, VFS has part­nered with UK char­i­ty Aer­o­bil­i­ty, which offers dis­abled peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fly an air­plane.

Mike Miller-Smith, CEO of Aer­o­bil­i­ty, said: “Aer­o­bil­i­ty is pleased to part­ner with VFS on this stu­dent design com­pe­ti­tion. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to encour­age tomorrow’s design­ers to con­sid­er acces­si­bil­i­ty at the birth of a new trans­port mode is very excit­ing.

“One can only imag­ine how dif­fer­ent air trav­el today would be for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties if this had been done at the birth of com­mer­cial avi­a­tion. We’re delight­ed to do our bit in help­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty get it right, from the out­set.”

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety encour­ages uni­ver­si­ties from around the world to form teams and take part in this excit­ing and chal­leng­ing com­pe­ti­tion, which is con­duct­ed to attract the best and bright­est engi­neer­ing stu­dents to the ver­ti­cal flight indus­try.

Two mem­bers of the first-place win­ning under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate teams are invit­ed to the 79th Annu­al Forum & Tech­nol­o­gy Dis­play — planned from May 13th to 15th, 2023 in West Palm Beach, Flori­da, USA — to present the details of their designs.

Mike Hirschberg, Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, said: “Some $10 bil­lion has been invest­ed in eVTOL devel­op­ments over the past six years, with near­ly half of that com­ing just this year. eVTOL air taxis can pro­vide safe, qui­et, afford­able, clean solu­tions for met­ro­pol­i­tan trans­porta­tion needs, so they must be usable by the widest pos­si­ble seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion.”

Albert G. Brand, Bell’s Senior Tech­ni­cal Fel­low for Flight Tech­nol­o­gy and the company’s lead for this year’s com­pe­ti­tion, added: “As an emerg­ing indus­try, it is not too ear­ly to antic­i­pate the greater needs of our soci­ety where it comes to eVTOL trans­porta­tion. We need to recog­nise the needs of trav­ellers with reduced mobil­i­ty and fac­tor that in our designs.”

The Annu­al Stu­dent Design Com­pe­ti­tion spon­sor­ship rotates between Air­bus, The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny, Bell, Leonar­do Heli­copters, Siko­rsky Air­craft and the US Army Research Lab.

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety is the world’s pre­mier ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal soci­ety. Since it was found­ed as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety in 1943, the Soci­ety has been a major force in the advance­ment of ver­ti­cal flight.

VFS is the glob­al resource for infor­ma­tion on ver­ti­cal flight tech­nol­o­gy. For more than 75 years, it has pro­vid­ed glob­al lead­er­ship for sci­en­tif­ic, tech­ni­cal, edu­ca­tion­al and leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tives that advance the state of the art of ver­ti­cal flight.

This year’s RFP and past years win­ning entries are post­ed on the VFS web­site at .