Honeywell International, Inc., announced on June 16 that it had created a business unit, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), to tap the opportunities in the developing UAS and urban air mobility (UAM) industries. The new division under Honeywell’s Aerospace segment will include engineering and sales resources to cater to customers’ requirements in the UAM market.
Yavne, Israel-based Urban Aeronautics announced on June 11 that it had signed an agreement with hydrogen fuel-cell innovator HyPoint, Inc., with offices in Menlo Park, California. Urban Aeronautics, the developer of the CityHawk Fancraft, and HyPoint, a leader in next-generation, high-power, high-temperature proton-exchange-membrane (HTPEM) hydrogen fuel-cell systems, will explore the development of an advanced version of the CityHawk eVTOL powered by HyPoint’s cutting-edge, hydrogen fuel-cell stack technology.
June 12 saw the much-awaited unveiling of Beta Technologies’ Alia eVTOL when the company authorized journalist Eric Adams (a past Vertiflite contributor) to release photos and information on the aircraft.
Airbus Helicopters posted a video on July 31 stating that its “CityAirbus demonstrator performed its first fully automatic flight: take off, stabilisation in flight and landing” at its Donauwörth, Germany, plant.
On June 3, Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Kitty Hawk and Alex Roetter, president of the Kitty Hawk Flyer program, announced on its website blog that it was ending its ultralight eVTOL program. “We built and flew 111 aircraft. More than 75 people flew Flyer. We proved to ourselves that people could safely operate Flyer — and become a pilot — with less than two hours of training. On a single day, we trained 50 new novice Flyer pilots, none of whom were licensed...
Calling itself “The first electric Short Take Off and Landing (eSTOL) aircraft for middle-mile logistics,” Airflow came out of stealth on June 10. The company, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, was founded in 2019 by a team who worked together on the now-defunct Airbus Vahana program.
Slovenia’s Pipistrel has received a Type Certification from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for its Velis Electro, a full-electric derivative of its proven Virus SW 121. The company said the Velis Electro is the world’s first electric-powered airplane to receive a Type Certificate (EASA.A.573 TCDS, dated May 18, 2020).
Deli Zhao, a radio-controlled aircraft model and small drone producer in Guangdong Province, China, flew a one-seat eVTOL “flying motorcycle” in June 2018 — followed by a two-seat “flying bathtub” concept more recently — which attracted millions of dollars of venture capital funds from Chinese investors.
EHang has been developing a human-passenger electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft along with drones for many years (see “How EHang Build an eVTOL for the World,” Vertiflite, July/Aug 2020). Few aviation startups are poised to take advantage of manned and unmanned urban air mobility (UAM) as EHang.
SkyDrive Inc. (head office: Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo; Tomohiro Fukuzawa CEO announced today that it had completed a ¥3.9 billion Series B fundraising through the allocation of new shares to 10 investors, including Development Bank of Japan Inc. SkyDrive, a world-leading developer of urban air mobility solutions, is a budding maker of flying cars and heavy-load-specific industrial cargo drones.
