FutureFlight

Austrian aircraft maintenance firm Primus Aero has decided to purchase a fleet of PAL-V’s Liberty “flying cars,” the companies announced on Thursday. A PAL-V spokesperson told FutureFlight that Primus has initially reserved five Liberty vehicles, and the company has already placed down payments for those deliveries. Primus will primarily use the two-seat, drive-and-fly vehicles to quickly transport maintenance technicians and spare parts to clients at various airports, thereby reducing aircraft downtime. 

EHang has raised an additional $23 million in working capital with a private share subscription by South Korean music producer and entertainment entrepreneur Lee Soo Man. The Chinese company says it is getting closer to completing domestic type certification for its EH216 two-seat autonomous eVTOL aircraft.

Artificial intelligence isn’t only changing the way airplanes fly. It’s transforming nearly every aspect of aviation on the ground, too. As AI and machine-learning technology have matured in recent years, the aviation industry has explored ways to capitalize on it by making ground operations more efficient and often safer. Aircraft developers can also leverage generative AI—models like ChatGPT that use machine learning and deep neural networks—to drastically speed up design and testing processes for new aircraft.

Doroni Aerospace has successfully completed the first piloted flight test of its H1 personal eVTOL aircraft, the company announced Wednesday. According to Doroni, this was the first flight test of any two-seat personal eVTOL aircraft in the U.S., marking a significant milestone for what the company calls the “flying car” industry and market. 

Volatus Infrastructure Plans New Vertiport at Texas Airport

Ribbit, a Toronto-based tech start-up developing autonomous flight control software for cargo airplanes, has won a $1.3 million contract from the Canadian government to conduct flight trials over northern Canada. 

Transport Canada, the nation’s transportation safety regulator, awarded Ribbit the contract via the Innovative Solutions Canada program, a government initiative that provides grants and procurement contracts to small businesses to facilitate the development and commercialization of new technologies. 

ARC Aero Systems now says it will offer both three- and nine-seat versions of its planned Linx compound rotorcraft. While the larger, hybrid-electric P9 version will have a fixed wing as well as a main rotor to support range of up to almost 600 miles, the new smaller P3 model will be all-electric and with just a main rotor for flights of up to almost 70 miles. The UK company aims to get the Linx P3 certified in 2026, followed by the P9 three years later.

A full-scale model of Heart Aerospace's 30-passenger regional airliner will be used for taxi and charging tests to be conducted at Malmö Airport in southern Sweden as part of the latest phase of the Scandinavian country's Elise electric aviation program that will run through April 2025. The development work has received new funding from Sweden's Vinnova innovation agency, and will also involve airlines SAS and Braathens, and battery developer Northvolt.

Self-evidently, the path to replacing fossil-fuel flights with net zero electric aviation has to start somewhere, and in Norway that somewhere could be the country’s 93^rd largest city Førde on the rugged country’s North Sea coast.

Joby Aviation says it has finished submitting all the certification plans for its eVTOL aircraft to the FAA, marking a significant milestone in its path to launching a commercial air taxi service in the U.S. in 2025. With the submission of all its certification plans, Joby is close to completing the third of five stages of the FAA type certification process.