type certification granted
Type certification of CityAirbus NextGen eVTOL aircraft by the end of 2025
Two separate Airbus group entities—the Silicon Valley-based A3 by Airbus advanced technology subsidiary and Airbus Helicopters—are leading efforts to launch Airbus's entry to the eVTOL market with a pair of technology demonstrators being used to define the planned design.
A3 was responsible for flight testing the single-seat Vahana model and Airbus Helicopters is working on the four-seat CityAirbus aircraft. In June 2019, Airbus confirmed that neither of these models will be type certified for service entry. In April 2019, the company began design work on what is expected to be a more fully defined eVTOL prototype, based on information gathered from the Vahana and CityAirbus demonstrator programs.
Flight testing of the Vahana was concluded on November 14 after a flight test campaign of 13.41 hours and 138 flights since the start of the program in Pendleton, Oregon, on January 31, 2018. The demonstrator aircraft flew a total of 560 miles (903 km) during the test campaign, with the longest flight being just over 31 miles and the longest duration being 19 minutes 56 seconds.
Airbus vice president of urban air mobility systems Zach Lovering reported in a November 27 blog post that the Vahana program performed its last test flight on November 14, 2019. Lovering promised to share more details in a future post, meanwhile noting that the fully electric, autonomous eVTOL aircraft flew a total of 487 nm (903 km) over the course of the flight test campaign. In May 2019, Airbus reported that the aircraft had achieved full transition from vertical to horizontal flight. During testing, the aircraft flew at 12 different intermediate speeds up to its projected top speed of 115 mph.
On May 3, 2019, Airbus Helicopters confirmed that the CityAirbus model had flown for the first time that day. On December 21, 2019, the aircraft made its first untethered and remotely piloted flight.
On October 2, 2019, Airbus Helicopters signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency to cooperate in the field of VTOL aircraft. The agreement will cover work such as the European manufacturer's Racer demonstrator, the certification of new piloting assistance systems such as Airbus's EAGLE technology, and thermal/electrical hybridization of rotorcraft (including new eVTOL designs).
On July 31, 2020, Airbus achieved a first automatic takeoff, flight stabilization and landing with CityAirbus at its Donauworth facility in Germany. It also announced plans to move the aircraft to its Manching site, near Munich, in order to expand the flight envelope to include forward movement from around the end of August.
In September 2021, during a sustainability summit conference at its headquarters in Toulouse, Airbus broke a long silence over its plans for the advanced air mobility sector, announcing the CityAirbus NextGen aircraft. It unveiled a design for a fixed-wing aircraft, with a V-shaped tail and eight sets of electric motors and propellers. An engineering team led by Airbus Helicopters is working on the detailed design for the CityAirbus NextGen model, with the aim of achieving a first flight with a prototype in 2023, en route to type certification in 2025. It will carry up to four passengers on flights of up to 80 km (50 miles) and at speeds of 120 km/h (75 mph).
