NEOM and Volocopter marked an important milestone with the successful completion of a series of air taxi test flights in Saudi Arabia. The flight test campaign lasted over a week and built on 18 months of collaboration between NEOM, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), and Volocopter. The parties worked closely to ensure full regulatory compliance and safety ahead of the test campaign
Nadhmi Al-Nasr, Chief Executive, NEOM, said: “The successful test flight of a Volocopter eVTOL is not just another milestone towards the creation of NEOM’s innovative, sustainable, multimodal transportation system – it is a tangible example of NEOM as a global accelerator and incubator of solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Abdulaziz A. Al-Duailej, President, General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: commented: “This safe and successful test flight represents an important milestone of the Saudi aviation sector and another steady step towards achieving the aviation sector’s strategy, through innovation and employing emerging technologies to create new industries that contribute to the output GDP and create more jobs.”
Christian Bauer, Chief Commercial Officer of Volocopter: “It is beyond exciting to see our work from the past 18 months come to fruition. As the first eVTOL aircraft to ever test in Saudi Arabia, we are proud to have lain the groundworks for our future collaboration here in NEOM.”
The test campaign focused on the flight performance of the Volocopter aircraft in local climate and environmental conditions, as well as testing its integration into the local unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) system.