FutureFlight

Lyte Aviation is exploring the basis for hybrid-electric VTOL flights to replace ferries to connect island communities in the Seattle area with its planned 40-seat SkyBus LA-44 aircraft. The European start-up unveiled plans for the tandem tilt-wing design in March and is working toward projected type certification and service entry in 2030.

Natilus's Kona autonomous cargo aircraft is a blended-wing-body design, which the company says is well suited to storing hydrogen fuel to maximize payload and range. It will use the ZA600 hydrogen-electric propulsion system being developed by ZeroAvia.

Merlin has deployed a pair of Cessna Caravan aircraft to continue testing of its autonomous flight technology at its new facility in New Zealand. The company says this process will include joint cargo delivery operations with local company Freightways.

NASA Flight Trials Evaluate Communications Infrastructure for Advanced Air Mobility

The business aviation community got its first glimpse at what it will be like to travel in nascent eVTOL aircraft, with a full-scale mockup of the Lilium Jet unveiled this week at the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition in Geneva. The German manufacturer exhibited an example of the Pioneer Edition, which features a club-four seating configuration that gives more space than the standard six-seater Shuttle version.

Kawasaki Motors has become a strategic investor in VoltAero, joining Series B funding for the development, production, and certification of VoltAero’s Cassio electric-hybrid aircraft family. The companies revealed the undisclosed investment just prior to the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva but did not specify a dollar amount.  

As it prepares to launch eVTOL air taxi services in 2025, Joby Aviation has become the first advanced air mobility company to achieve registration under the Standard for Business Aircraft Operators (IS-BAO) registration process. The program helps operators apply industry best practices by challenging them to review and compare their safety-related policies, processes, and procedures and then make improvements.

An AAM trip simulator from French startup Moove serves as a multimodal door-to-door portal offered to future AAM operators and airports as an SaaS. With the product, every stakeholder and future passenger can easily visualize flights, their benefits in travel time savings, and reductions in CO2 emissions.

Multiple factors drove Vertical Aerospace’s decision earlier this month to push back the target date to certify its VX-4 four-passenger eVTOL aircraft to the end of 2026.

Artificial intelligence is capable of generating highly optimized aircraft designs that are more efficient than conventional airplanes designed by humans—and they may resemble alien spaceships, Boeing’s chief technology officer Todd Citron said during a panel discussion at the Sustainable Aerospace Together Forum, which Boeing hosted near Seattle last week. Researchers are already using generative AI models to explore new ways to optimize aircraft design, according to Citron.