As Dana Jensen, senior industrial policy analyst, keeps watch over the development of advanced air mobility vehicles and their supply chains through the lens of the U.S. Air Force Agility Prime initiative, he has a recurring thought.
Advanced air mobility’s OEMs held their positions for the April listing of the AAM Reality Index, developed by SMG Consulting in partnership with Aviation Week.
What a journey across town in an autonomous air taxi could look like, flying through airspace shared with drones and piloted aircraft, is revealed in a new concept of operations for urban air mobility produced by Wisk Aero and vertiports developer Skyports.
Formalizing a relationship first announced at the Paris Air Show in 2019, U.S. regional airline Cape air has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Eviation Aircraft for the purchase of 72 Alice electric aircraft.
Zanite Acquisition has beefed up the committed funding that is backing its planned going-public merger with Eve, Embraer’s urban air mobility spinoff, as it heads into a May 6 shareholder vote on the deal.
In August 2019 I wrote in Aviation Week & Space Technology about how the electronic vertical takeoff and landing sector was a hot topic in the industry.
Honeywell has started testing reaction time differences between expert pilots and novices on its prototype simplified vehicle operation cockpit system for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
Bcomp, a Swiss startup producing composites using natural fibers, has received an investment from Airbus Ventures as part of a CHF34 million ($35 million) Series B financing round led by BMW i Ventures.
A hybrid-electric power system designed for applications ranging from drones to uncrewed cargo aircraft and passenger air taxis has been unveiled by startup LaunchPoint Electric Propulsion Solutions.
With testing of a subscale uncrewed demonstrator underway in waters off Tampa, Florida, Regent has solidified its maritime certification path with confirmations from U.S. and European aviation regulators that its planned wing-in-ground-effect (WIG) regional transports are not considered aircraft.
Austrian startup CycloTech and Japanese package carrier Yamato have completed a study into the feasibility of developing an uncrewed cargo aircraft using thrust-vectoring cyclorotor propulsion to operate in confined urban areas, even in high winds.
German energy company EnBW and aerospace research agency DLR have launched a three-year project to explore the use of cargo and passenger drones to support the maintenance of offshore wind farms.
Germany’s Lilium has taken another step in the type certification process for its electric vertical takeoff and landing air taxi, submitting its means of compliance to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
Benefiting perhaps from steadily improving relations between China and Indonesia, EHang has secured its largest commitment to date from an Asian customer with preorders for 100 EH216 autonomous air taxis from Prestige Aviation, an Indonesian aircraft sales and management company.
At first, advanced air mobility flights will be piloted. But the industry widely agrees its aircraft must become autonomous at some point if operations are to scale up to hoped-for high volumes. Rather than if, the debate centers largely on when.
Long-time agency official Lirio Liu will take over as executive director of FAA’s Aircraft Certification Service, replacing Earl Lawrence, who moves to the NextGen Office to become deputy assistant administrator.
German startup Theion is targeting electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft as an early market for solid-state, lithium-sulfur batteries that promise three times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion cells.
Start-up Overwatch Imaging of Hood River, Oregon, has closed an $11 million Series A financing round to advance its precision imaging payloads designed for drones and general aviation aircraft.
The FBO division of Europe’s Luxaviation Group plans to develop ground infrastructure for future advanced air mobility (AAM) vehicles as it pursues a growth strategy based on building and acquiring new facilities.
Atlantia, the parent company of subsidiaries that have formed an urban air mobility venture known as Urban Blue, is the target of multiple private equity firms.
