FutureFlight

The 2023 Airtaxi World Congress is coming to San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in October, drawing hundreds of attendees from more than 70 countries to discuss the nascent urban air mobility industry as several eVTOL air taxi developers are preparing to certify their aircraft in the next 18 months. 

There’s no denying that Avports has some pedigree when it comes to urban air mobility. Roll back the clock to the Midtown Manhattan "Mad Men" glory days of the late 1960s, when helicopters shuttled the great and the good to the top of the Pan Am Building, and you find the company’s origins as part of Pan Am World Services running that iconic facility.

Vertical Aerospace says a bonding issue in a propeller was the root cause of an August 9 accident that badly damaged its VX4 eVTOL prototype aircraft during flight testing at Cotswold Airport in the UK.

The Norwegian government has approved an $8 million grant to support Elfly Group’s plans to develop an all-electric seaplane. The support was announced by Enova SF, the country’s Ministry of Climate and Environment, on August 30 and takes the start-up’s soft funding tally to $10 million, which has been matched by early investors.

Swedish start-up Kookiejar is not alone in believing that for advanced air mobility (AAM) to have a lasting impact on the way people and things move around, the infrastructure that supports new air vehicles including drones and eVTOL aircraft will need to be flexible, affordable, and accessible. Working in tandem with the uncrewed air traffic management specialist A2M formed by its founder, Kim Silander, the company is patiently developing early use cases for establishing networks of low-cost vertiports that can be easily scaled up in something of a cookie-cutter approach.

Xpeng’s X2 Flying Car Makes River Crossing in Hunan Province

The fifth generation of the XPeng AeroHT’s flying car concept, the two-seat Xpeng X2, completed its first demonstration flight over the Xiang River at Changsha in Hunan province on August 26. Starting its flight from the river’s left bank, the X2 flew just shy of a mile in four minutes before landing safely at Zhoutou Square.

Taking the advanced air mobility (AAM) hype at face value, eVTOL aircraft developers continue to promise investors they will be producing vehicles at rates never previously achieved in the aviation industry. The forecast economies of scale for this new sector of air transportation are predicated on achieving new levels of manufacturing efficiency that have prompted some companies to look outside the mainstream aerospace sector for expertise and bandwidth.

The Canadian company has agreed to a business combination with Pono Capital Three in a new bid to raise capital to bring its Cavorite hybrid-electric aircraft to market. Horizon says that better-than-expected results from early flight testing of a half-scale demonstrator have led it to increase the size of the latest X7 design to carry six passengers and a pilot.

Terra Drone has acquired a majority stake in uncrewed air traffic management (UTM) specialist Unifly. The Japanese group said the deal completed this week to take its equity holding in the Europe-based company to 51 percent will boost its growth plans in both drone operations and the urban air mobility sector.

Just one year after Textron publicly confirmed its intent to develop and certify the hybrid-electric Nexus eVTOL aircraft, the U.S. aircraft manufacturer has made a leadership change at its new eAviation business unit in a move that could signal a new approach to its advanced air mobility efforts. To date, the timeline for bringing the aircraft to market has been relatively open, with company indicating type certification could be possible anywhere between 2028 and 2032, with 2030 seen as the most probable date.