Volocopter completes first crewed flight of an eVTOL aircraft in France as part of week-long test campaign

Volo­copter has become the first eVTOL air­craft com­pa­ny to con­duct both crewed and remote­ly pilot­ed test flights in France, after its full-scale 2X pro­to­type com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tions at Pon­toise Air­field near Paris on Mon­day.

The crewed flights were part of a week-long urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) test cam­paign that will give Volo­copter and its part­ners – Groupe ADP and RATP Group – key insights for sub­se­quent­ly launch­ing the indus­try in time for the 2024 Paris Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games. 

Volocopter’s 2X, was used to mea­sure the aircraft’s noise emis­sions, with the data to be used by the company’s part­ners to shape the future of urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vices in and around Paris.

Chris­t­ian Bauer, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, said: We have demon­strat­ed our pio­neer­ing pow­er once again here in Paris. By fly­ing our air­craft in a crewed con­fig­u­ra­tion at a Paris air­port, we are prov­ing to one of our launch cities first­hand that our air­craft will offer a prac­ti­cal addi­tion for poten­tial air­port-to-city routes.” 

Volo­copter first car­ried out an uncrewed flight in its eVTOL air­craft in France at the Paris Air Forum, which took place in June last year. Togeth­er with its part­ners, the com­pa­ny is gear­ing up for com­mer­cial launch in the next two to three years.

The UAM test­ing sand­box at Pon­toise Air­field address­es the chal­lenges of this new form of mobil­i­ty direct­ly by assess­ing UAM solu­tion use, accept­abil­i­ty, reg­u­la­tions, tech­nolo­gies, and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. Fur­ther­more, the air­field offers a real and secure aero­nau­ti­cal envi­ron­ment in a sub­ur­ban area, locat­ed about 35 km north­west of Paris.

Volocopter’s fam­i­ly of eVTOL air­craft will offer pas­sen­gers (VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect) and goods (Volo­Drone) swift, secure, and emis­sion-free con­nec­tions to their des­ti­na­tions, sup­port­ed by VoloIQ, the UAM ecosystem’s soft­ware plat­form that serves as its dig­i­tal back­bone for safe and effi­cient oper­a­tions.  

The com­pa­ny will launch com­mer­cial ser­vices with­in the next few years and recent­ly con­firmed its new CEO and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dirk Koke, who replaces Flo­ri­an Reuter and will take up his new posi­tion lat­er this year.

The com­pa­ny has com­plet­ed more than 1,000 suc­cess­ful pub­lic and pri­vate test flights, and raised $579 mil­lion in equi­ty from investors, includ­ing Geely, WP Invest­ment, Mer­cedes-Benz Group, Intel Cap­i­tal, and Black­Rock. The most recent announce­ment saw Volo­copter com­plete an ini­tial sign­ing of a $170 mil­lion Series E Round, which will con­tribute towards the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its eVTOL air­craft.