LONDON – Airbus, in its initiative to strengthen advanced air mobility has teamed up with leading companies, universities, and research institutions along with support from local bodies and municipalities to form Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) to harness, develop and strengthen Urban Air Mobility in Germany.
The new Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) will include esteemed members and stakeholders like Airbus, City of Ingolstadt, Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Flugsicherung GmBH (DFS), Diehl Aerospace, Droniq, Munich Airport, Red Cross, and Telekom.
Under the support of the Free State of Bavaria and the Federal Republic of Germany, the new Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) will include setting up a series of research projects aimed at bringing the reality of providing cities with urban air mobility.
The fundamental of these projects is based on Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft, Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), and Airport & City Integration with Vertiports.
Speaking on this enormous success of the first steps toward UAM in Germany, Markus May, Head of Operations for Urban Air Mobility at Airbus said:
“In many parts of the world, eVTOLs will offer a whole new mobility service in the near future. Airbus and the AMI partners are aware that the introduction of such a system requires the cooperation of many players with different competencies.”
“Our goal is to build a transport service that benefits society and this is what we are setting up here in Bavaria.”
The Way Ahead
With the new foundation laid to equip Germany with Urban Air Mobility, Airbus and its stakeholder in this initiative have marked a path to achieve their milestones.
With Airbus in lead, the path will comprise various inter stakeholder relations to achieve goals in derived time.
The first step will begin with Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) addressing prerequisites in areas like technology, infrastructure, legal, and Society for the future implementation of advanced air transportation.
The outcomes of this prerequisite will be then carried out through the demonstration of the project under real conditions with eVTOLs.
In this Air Mobility Initiative (AIM), Airbus will lead the vehicle stream along with Diehl Aerospace, the University of Stuttgart, and other channel partners.
While the Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) activities will deal with a safe and efficient flight of vehicles on their flight paths and routes in and around the periphery of cities.
The area of UTM is being strengthen by the industry experts like Droniq, Airbus, f.u.n.k.e. Avionics, SkyFive, BrigkAir, Deutsche Flugsicherung GmBH (DFS), Telekom, Universities from Munich and Hamburg and other interline partners.
Munich Airport, Deutsche Bhan, Bauhaus Luftfahrt, Airport Nürnberg, University of Ingolstadt, and the University of Munich will be heading vertiport activities for Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) with the focus on take-off and landing for the aircraft and their integration with airports and cities.
Work on the pilot Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) has begun in January 2022 with test flights of the demonstration to be executed soon around the region of Ingolstadt.
The initial capital funding of this remarkable project was financed by the Free State of Bavaria with a contribution of €17 million and another €24 million by the Federal Republic of Germany.
The total funding has been accounted for €86 million with the remaining being funded by the industries and stakeholders involved in Air Mobility Initiative (AMI).
