On May 3, Airbus Helicopters CEO Bruno Even tweeted, “Congratulations to the Airbus and Siemens teams who performed the first successful take-off of the CityAirbus demonstrator in Donauwörth. Next step: flight envelope expansion in Manching!” However, the photo was of the aircraft on the ground with the test team.
The Boeing Company announced on May 2 that it had completed the first outdoor flight tests of its Cargo Air Vehicle (CAV). In a safe and controlled environment, the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) successfully took off, hovered, transitioned to forward flight and then landed safely.
In April 2019, PAL-V and Royal NLR (Netherlands Aerospace Centre) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for mutual cooperation to develop an autonomous eVTOL flying car. The two organizations aim for a market introduction within 10 years. PAL-V is currently finalizing the development of the PAL-V Liberty (shown), which it expects to be the world’s first commercial flying car next year.
LIFT Aircraft gave the public an opportunity to check out their Hexa autonomous single-seat eVTOL prototype at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival in Austin, Texas, held this year on Mar. 8–17. Attendees of the Smart Mobility Summit got to sit in the Hexa demonstrator and simulate flying in the ultralight eVTOL using virtual reality (VR) goggles.
The third annual Uber Elevate Summit touched down at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC, on June 11-12, 2019 — just one month after the Silicon Valley mobility company raised $8.1 billion when its shares (UBER) started trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Electric/hybrid-electric propulsion enables new vertical flight aircraft configurations that have tremendous potential — but also significant challenges — to bring a radical transformation of air transportation for unmanned package delivery, unmanned logistics, personal air travel, air taxis, urban air mobility (UAM), regional air mobility (RAM) and many other missions.
Uber held its third annual summit on June 11-12 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. According to the company, "The Uber Elevate Summit brought together 1200+ attendees for 2 days of technical sessions, hands-on demos, and evening networking events." This page is a web capture from https://www.uber.com/us/en/elevate/summit/2019/attending, June 2019.
Uber held its third annual Elevate Summit on June 11-12 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. VFS was there in force, live-tweeting the event (https://twitter.com/electricVTOL) and posting photos real-time on Twitter and Facebook.
VFS has an album of 60 pictures from the event in the Vertical Flight Photo Gallery.
The Vertical Flight Society held its 75th Annual Forum & Technology Display, the world's leading international event on vertical flight technology, on May 13-16, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This special 75th anniversary event spanned four days and included a record 280+ technical papers, plus 75 presentations and discussions by leaders in industry, the military, government agencies and academia. Forum 75 was a spectacular success with a record 1,400 attendees celebrated 75 years of advancing vertical flight. Find out more about Forum 75 proceedings papers, photos and more!
On May 8, 2019, XTI Aircraft announced that they had successfully completed the first test flights of its 65% scale prototype of the TriFan 600 VTOL aircraft.
