FutureFlight

Airflow will replace the Cessna 210's piston engine with the hybrid-electric propulsion system being provided by VerdeGo Aero as it finalizes the architecture for its planned eSTOL cargo-carrying aircraft. It wants to be ready to start test flights of a full-scale prototype by 2023.

Spanish infrastructure development and operations group Ferrovial will help eVTOL aircraft developer Lilium to build a network of 10 or more vertiports across the state of Florida. The first of the new locations could be announced in the Spring of 2021, and will likely be in south Florida. Flight operations could begin in 2025.

Cyrus Sigari, managing partner in early-stage venture capital group Up.Partners, says it is advanced air mobility's potential to democratize air travel that underpins its investment potential. He said investors should be ready to back an array of enabling technologies, not only in aviation.

The UK government has matched funding from GKN Aerospace and five partners to support the development of the H2GEAR hydrogen propulsion system. The program's supporters say the technology could be ready to enter service by 2026.

The “We are all ONE in the sky” group—including commercial airlines, business aviation, general aviation, air traffic control, and pilot organizations, among others—published an open letter to European Union member states on January 25, to outline their concerns about how autonomous aircraft will share airspace with existing aircraft.

Terrafugia, which is owned by Chinese automobile group Geely, is continuing development work for a four-seat eVTOL aircraft called the TF-2. It is taking orders for its Transition flying car to be used in flight-only mode for now.

The UK's Vertical Aerospace says it is on track to complete type certification for its five-seat, all-electric aircraft in 2024, with flight testing of a full-scale prototype due to start with tethers in September 2021.

Bye Aerospace has contracted with Composites Universal Group to build fuselages for its two-seat, all-electric eFlyer 2 aircraft as it starts serial production of the model. The first few production-conforming aircraft will be used to complete the latter stages of FAA Part 23 type certification.

At the Vertical Flight Society's Electric VTOL Symposium, Joby Aviation's head of product, Eric Allison, indicated that commercial flights might be able to start ahead of the 2023 timeline established by Uber's Elevate program.

Jay Merkle, executive director of the FAA's UAS Integration Office, told the Vertical Flight Society's Electric VTOL Symposium that the first of the new-generation advanced air mobility aircraft could be certified in 2021. It seems likely that this will be a fixed-wing, conventional, or short takeoff and landing design.