UrbanLink Air Mobility had placed orders for up to 30 aircraft from Lilium.
Operators of future advanced air mobility (AAM) aircraft face a dilemma.
To date, they have placed well more than 15,000 conditional orders for AAM aircraft from a range of startups, according to data from SMG Consulting. But whether and how many of those aircraft deliveries will eventually materialize is an entirely different story.
As an illustration of their conundrum, data from SMG Consulting shows that more than 1,500 aircraft orders evaporated following the winding down of three companies late last year and early this year: U.S. startups Eviation and Overair and Germany’s Lilium. The vanished orders are an example of the challenge facing AAM operators—many of which are startups themselves—in ordering aircraft from companies that may not exist in several years’ time.
Given the precarious state of many startups in the AAM scene, buyers are hedging their bets by pursuing a wide range of designs and mission concepts in the hope that at least some of those companies will succeed.
Bristow Group, for example, has placed orders for electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) air taxis from Eve Air Mobility and Vertical Aerospace; both conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) and eVTOL variants from Beta Technologies; uncrewed hybrid VTOLs from Elroy Air; and hybrid-electric short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft from Electra.aero.
Bristow had also placed orders for aircraft from Eviation and Lilium before both companies ceased operating.
“It’s been kind of sad to watch—we all expected these things to happen when we set our first round of partnerships with the OEMs,” says Dave Stepanek, Bristow’s vice president for future mobility. “It was our hope that every one of them would succeed, but we knew that probably was not going to happen.”
Given the early demise of Eviation and Lilium, Bristow’s strategy of not placing its eggs in one basket appears to be paying off. As part of that concept, Stepanek says that Bristow wanted to “hedge its bets” by pursuing aircraft being certified by regulators in several jurisdictions, such as the U.S., European Union, UK and Brazil. He adds that Bristow’s orders reflect a variety of mission types, including air taxi, uncrewed cargo and regional travel.
“Our fleet strategy is: We’ll have battery-electric VTOL, battery-electric CTOL, hybrid-electric VTOL and hybrid- and hydrogen-electric CTOL, all with different ranges and capabilities,” Stepanek says. “Our objective is to be a total network for both regional mobility and the short-range missions that come with it.”
Another operator that was let down by the failures of Eviation and Lilium was UrbanLink Air Mobility, a South Florida-based startup founded by airline industry veteran Ed Wegel. The company had placed orders for up to 20 Lilium Jets for operation in a planned South Florida vertiport network, as well as 10 Alice electric regional aircraft from Eviation.
But like Bristow, UrbanLink’s varied orderbook—which also includes electric seagliders from Regent, eVTOL air taxis from Crisalion and hybrid cargo drones from Traverse Aero—will offset the loss of the conditional orders it placed with the two defunct OEMs, Wegel says.
Wegel adds that partnering with a range of companies was necessary not only to hedge against the risk of any given OEM failing, but also to ensure that UrbanLink is able to obtain enough early delivery slots to help it reach scale quickly and become an early market leader among AAM operators.
“In order for us to gain mass and scale in our business, we need to have multiple deals with multiple OEMs,” Wegel says. “That guards against the risk of delayed certification and deliveries, because we cannot afford to delay the launch of our service.”
Helicopter operator Blade Air Mobility has placed orders for eVTOL air taxis from Beta and Eve, which it plans to use as a drop-in replacement for its existing urban air shuttles and organ transport flights. In the early stages, Blade says it plans to operate a mixed fleet of eVTOLs and helicopters on different mission types as determined by range, payload and other metrics. But unlike many other eVTOL operators, Blade already has a profitable helicopter business that substantially de-risks its electrification plans.
Complicating matters further is that the two air taxi startups most likely to certify in the near term—Archer and Joby—plan to operate their own airlines in the U.S. and possibly abroad, leaving some customers in the position of choosing from the growing ranks of cash-strapped startups that increasingly look doomed to fail.
That is not necessarily the case for operators in international markets, however. Archer has unveiled a hybrid business model in which it operates its own airline in the U.S. and sells its aircraft abroad. Joby has not officially taken that step, but the company’s founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt hinted at it on the company’s latest earnings call in March.
Abu Dhabi-based Future Flight Global, for example, is a start-up operator that has placed an order for up to 116 Midnight air taxis from Archer. Karan Khan, the company’s CEO, says he is confident enough in Archer’s position as a market leader to back up his commitment with predelivery deposits.
While Future Flight Global has not yet announced orders from any other eVTOL companies, Khan says it is in talks “with a couple of other OEMs with whom we will be having similar relationships.”
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