Blade Offers Helicopter Flights to Farnborough Airshow

Visitors to this year’s Farnborough International Airshow can skip the motorway and fly in from London aboard Blade helicopters. The service comes courtesy of Joby Aviation, the California-based electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer that acquired Blade’s passenger business last August and is using airshow week to demonstrate the kind of service it ultimately intends to fly with electric aircraft.

A full-scale mockup of Joby’s JAS4-1 eVTOL aircraft is on static display all week. The aircraft made its European debut at this show two years ago. For this year’s Farnborough Airshow, Blade is selling shared seats between London’s Battersea heliport and Farnborough for $425, along with private charters “from anywhere in England” starting at $8,750. The flights will use twin-engine AgustaWestland AW109 helicopters, which seat up to seven passengers. Heathrow is among Blade’s pickup points, and the airport is slated to become the southern hub of Joby’s planned UK eVTOL network.

Blade has offered UK charter service for years, including from Farnborough Airport. What’s new this week is the shared-seat product and Joby’s participation. “It’s both the shared seat and the fact that we’re doing it for Farnborough,” Joby chief product officer Eric Allison told AIN. “That hasn’t been done before.”

That helicopter-to-electric handoff has been Blade’s plan for at least four years. In 2022, Blade paid $50 million for the commercial passenger activities of Monacair, Héli Sécurité, and a third operator in the south of France. The deal made Blade the carriers’ exclusive customer and committed them to work toward an eventual transition to eVTOL aircraft in the region. Europe soon became Blade’s largest passenger market. Allison called Blade the world’s largest vertical-lift passenger service, noting that it carried about 90,000 passengers last year. 

Earlier this month, Nice Côte d’Azur Airport announced an alliance with Blade and those same French operators to prepare for eVTOL service on the Riviera, unveiling a full-scale model of the Joby aircraft at the airport.

In the UK, Joby plans to operate eVTOL flights in partnership with Virgin Atlantic Airways, which will market the service and support regulatory and infrastructure work. The partners envision a southern network from Heathrow and a northern one from Manchester Airport. A flight from Heathrow to London’s Canary Wharf business district could take as little as eight minutes, according to Joby.

Joby has appointed Max Coppin as its first UK general manager. It continues working with the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), where it has pursued concurrent validation of its FAA type certificate since 2022. The company is taking the same approach with EASA approval covering other European countries.

While Joby is showcasing its eVTOL aircraft at the Farnborough Airshow static display, Bristol-based Vertical Aerospace is flying its VX4 eVTOL aircraft at the show—months after Virgin Atlantic dropped its partnership with Vertical in favor of Joby, citing Joby’s ties to Delta Air Lines, which holds a 49% stake in the UK carrier.

As the FAA type certification program runs its course, Joby has been showing off its operational readiness in a series of flight demonstrations. In April, the company flew a week-long campaign in New York City, which it called the first point-to-point eVTOL operations in the city’s history, flying from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Manhattan heliports that serve as key hubs for daily Blade operations. In the San Francisco Bay Area, it flew from its Marina, California manufacturing base to the Golden Gate Bridge and in and out of Oakland International Airport’s Class B airspace.

Joby also won a spot in five projects, covering up to 11 states, under the White House-backed eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), which allows limited operations ahead of full certification. Allison said the company will begin operations under the program later this year, starting small and scaling up, and that it is weighing other aircraft beyond the eVTOL, including the autonomous-flight work from its Xwing acquisition, for some of those markets. However, analysts caution that FAA certification will likely slip from Joby’s 2026 target into 2027.

Dubai, meanwhile, has done more groundwork. Joby holds exclusive rights from the Roads and Transport Authority to operate air taxi services there for six years and plans to launch later this year.

On July 7, the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority certified VDX, a vertiport near Dubai International Airport built by London-based Skyports Infrastructure. VDX represents the world’s first purpose-built commercial vertiport cleared for eVTOL operations, according to Skyports. The four-story facility has two takeoff and landing areas, rapid charging, and capacity for up to 170,000 passengers annually. It is the first of four vertiports Skyports is building in the emirate.

“We’re definitely targeting flying passengers by the end of the year,” Allison said. However, it is not yet clear whether Joby’s first paying eVTOL passengers will take off from Dubai or the U.S., he said; the company is still fleshing out its eIPP plans and grappling with uncertainty surrounding the current geopolitical unrest in the region.