According to the eVTOL developer, GlobeAir will operate the Lilium Jets for first and last-mile service, transporting passengers to and from airports. 

Though Lilium hasn’t published the list price for its Lilium Jet, its $1 billion deal with Brazilian airline Azul for 220 jets has placed the individual prices at approximately $4.5 million.

Neither Lilium nor GlobeAir disclosed the terms of the deal.

The Lilium Jet is designed to carry a pilot and six passengers. Its maximum takeoff weight is expected to be 7,000 pounds, with a range between 22 and 108 nm. At its maximum speed, it could cruise at 162 knots.

“The French Riviera and Italy are key markets, and we are confident that our shared commitment to innovation and partnership will result in a premium customer experience,” said Sebastien Borel, Lilium’s senior vice president.

Strategic Growth for GlobeAir

According to GlobeAir, partnering with Lilium is a part of a long-term strategic plan to improve sustainability and advance new technologies. It also said it viewed Lilium’s as the most advanced player in research and development in the eVTOL sector, prompting the company’s investment.

According to GlobeAir, partnering with Lilium is a part of a long-term strategic plan to improve sustainability and advance new technologies. It also said it viewed Lilium’s as the most advanced player in research and development in the eVTOL sector, prompting the company’s investment.

GlobeAir CEO Bernhard Fragner described Lilium as “changing how we think about aviation” and said his company was proud to partner with a startup.

At present, GlobeAir offers on-demand charter services to more than 900 airports. The company operates 21 jets and has 80 pilots that fly mostly abroad. In fact, 96 percent of its revenues come from flying across borders in Europe, the company says.

Next Steps for Lilium

The partnership announcement comes as Lilium reports advancements in its aircraft development. In May, FLYING reported that the developer announced its first main wing transition from hovering to horizontal flight in a full-sized demonstrator. At the time, Lilium said its demonstrator Lilium Jet aircraft, Phoenix 2, performed a full transition from hover to wing-borne flight on both the main and canard wings while flying at approximately 100 knots. 

The company said this is significant because going from a powered vertical lift to an efficient wing-borne lift is tough. The test was conducted at the company’s test facility in Atlas, Spain.

• READ MORE: Google Co-Founder’s Kittyhawk eVTOL Company ‘Winding Down’

“The fact that the canard and the wing transitioned smoothly is a historic technical achievement in itself,” Lilium later explained in a second-quarter shareholder letter.

It now plans to build its third demonstrator, Phoenix 3, for additional testing. The company hopes to achieve type certification under EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) ahead of its plan to begin commercial service in 2025. Lilium has planned other launch networks in Germany, the U.S., and Brazil.

The post Lilium Secures Partnership with GlobeAir for 12 eVTOLs appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“The payment represents a watershed moment for the eVTOL industry, validating confidence in the commercialization of eVTOL aircraft and Archer’s leadership,” Archer said in a statement.

The payment serves as a defense against skeptics of the emerging eVTOL sector who had said the provisional $1 billion agreement between United and Archer announced in 2021 represented an easy and inexpensive ESG (environmental, social, and governance) victory. The exchange of cash puts more skin in the game for United. 

“To receive a cash deposit is validation of Archer’s achievements to date, not only with flight testing and product development, but also a great signal of confidence in our roadmap to commercialization,” said Archer CEO Adam Goldstein in a statement. “We’re thankful to United for their continued partnership as we usher in this new era in air travel.”

Archer is one of a handful of startups flight testing eVTOLs in hopes of offering passengers quick, convenient, and emission-free hops over gridlocked traffic as soon as 2024. The entirely new form of air transportation, supporters say, has the potential to create thousands, if not hundreds, of new jobs for pilots, at a time when airlines are already suffering from lack of flight crew availability. 

“United Airlines Ventures has invested in a diverse roster of companies working in support of our goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, without the use of traditional carbon offsets,” said Michael Leskinen, president of United Airlines Ventures. “We believe eVTOLs have the potential to both help achieve carbon-neutral travel and serve as an innovative new tool to change how United customers experience comfort, convenience, and efficiency during their commutes within cities across the globe.”

• READ MORE: Archer and United Form eVTOL Operations Committee

United isn’t the only traditional airline to invest in eVTOL. Since 2017, JetBlue Technology Ventures, a subsidiary of JetBlue (NASDAQ: JBLU), has been a major investor in California-based Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY), which is developing an air taxi eVTOL expected to enter service in 2024. 
Other traditional carriers, including American Airlines (NASDAQ: AAL), Gol, Azul, and UPS (NYSE: UPS) have announced deals with eVTOL developers that have not yet achieved type certification for their aircraft.

The post Archer Aviation Receives $10 Million Pre-Payment from United Airlines appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Engineers said adding tricycle landing gear to the finalized preliminary design of the Lilium Jet will offer pilots the option to execute short running landings as an alternative to landing vertically. 

“This will give our customers additional reassurance of safety, flexibilIty and operating range,” said a company letter to shareholders released last week.

The change, said Lilium chief technology officer Alastair McIntosh, is about managing precious available energy during all situations in the battery-powered aircraft. The Lilium Jet is designed to carry a pilot and six passengers with a maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of 3,175 kg (7,000 pounds).

‘Real-World Scenarios’

For any eVTOL, the transition from horizontal flight to vertical landing and then hovering to touchdown typically requires significant amounts of battery energy. McIntosh said designing the aircraft with a running landing capability will be important to the aircraft’s certification by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and other aviation regulators “because it increases reserve range to address the jet’s ability to deal with real-world scenarios and be able to divert to an alternate landing site.”

Speaking in a newly released company video, McIntosh reminded viewers that transition is “the most difficult maneuver that a VTOL aircraft can undertake.” In fact, after years of test flights with full-sized prototypes, Lilium announced last month it had successfully achieved transition with a demonstrator aircraft for the first time. 

Lilium is just one of several companies currently developing eVTOL passenger aircraft. While many other eVTOL air taxis are propelled vertically and horizontally by tilt-rotor systems, the Lilium Jet uses an array of ducted fans embedded across the aircraft’s wings and forward canards.

This isn’t the first major change to the design. Last January, Lilium revealed it was tweaking its ducted fan array—reducing the number of propulsors from 36 to 30—nine on each wing and six on each canard. As a result of the change, engineers said fewer batteries were required to power the aircraft, thereby reducing its overall weight while maintaining the same total thrust efficiency.

Batteries Are Key to Success

Lilium acknowledges that the batteries powering the aircraft are “at the core” of its architecture. Engineers have chosen cell technology developed by Zenlabs and manufactured by Germany-based Customcells. The design of these batteries is exclusive to Lilium and described as “one of the highest performance cells for practical use in eVTOL aircraft in existence today.”

Based on independent test results, these cells can support a high specific power density of 2,500 watts per kilogram, even down to 20 percent state of charge,” said McIntosh.

As battery technology improves, according to the letter, Lilium plans to upgrade its air taxi, which it said will result in “significant range and capability upgrades” over time.

• READ MORE: Lilium Names Airbus Exec as New CEO

Other Design Changes

Other changes to the Lilium Jet’s final preliminary design include:

• The aircraft’s rear wings were moved slightly upward and to the rear of the fuselage;
• Winglets were added to the tips of the canards;
• Redundant space was eliminated in the fuselage by decreasing the overall fuselage length, which reduced the eVTOL’s overall weight.

Lilium has been flying full-sized prototypes of its Phoenix test articles since 2019. Most recently, its Phoenix 2 demonstrator has been undergoing flight testing at ATLAS Flight Center in Villacarrillo, Spain.

‘Optimum Final Jet Architecture’

EASA certification of the Lilium Jet continues to move forward. Proposals have been submitted to EASA outlining how the aircraft will comply with certification requirements, which is part of the process for demonstrating airworthiness requirements outlined in EASA’s certification basis. 

The company has long said its eVTOL will have an expected range of 200 km (108 nm) and a cruise speed of 300 km/hr (162 knots).

“We believe we’ve converged on an optimum final jet architecture that will meet the agreed certification requirements and achieve a projected physical range of approximately 250 km (135 nm) at launch, which is more than enough for our anticipated launch routes,” McIntosh said in a design update video. 

Pending certification, the company has made provisional agreements with Brazilian airline Azul, which will purchase 220 Lilium Jets_, and with U.S.-based NetJets, which will buy up to 150.   

“We’ve successfully conducted a rigorous preliminary design review process,” McIntosh said. “We’ve converged on a final design which we have every confidence safely achieves the performance our launch customers require.”

The post Lilium Tweaks Its eVTOL Design for Short Running Landings appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Lilium, a Germany-based electric jet maker, has announced plans to sell 220 of its aircraft to Brazilian airline Azul in a $1 billion commercial deal.

If finalized, the agreement will represent the single largest order in the eVTOL startup’s history, which has previously announced network launch plans in Europe and the US.

As part of the partnership, Azul would operate and maintain the Lilium Jet fleet, while Lilium would provide an aircraft health monitoring platform, replacement batteries and other custom spare parts, according to a news release. Azul also expects to support Lilium with the necessary regulatory approval processes in Brazil for certification of the Lilium Jet and any other required regulatory approvals. The plan is to start the network up in 2025.

Lilium launched in 2015. In 2020, it announced plans to build the first vertiport in the U.S. with the construction of a $25 million, 56,000-square-foot facility in Orlando, Florida.

The first flight of the eVTOL took place in May 2019.

This week, Lilium also announced the appointment of Gabrielle Toledano, chief operating officer at Keystone Strategy and Henri Courpron, founder and chairman of Plane View Partners and former CEO of ILFC and Airbus North America to its board of directors.

The board will be chaired by former Airbus CEO Thomas Enders, upon completion of Lilium’s merger with special purpose acquisition company Qell. That deal is expected to be complete in September.

The post Lilium Announces $1 Billion Deal with Brazilian Airline appeared first on FLYING Magazine.