Volocopter flies over South Korea’s Incheon Airport
Seoul, South Korea, 16 November 2021 – Today, German urban air mobility (UAM) pioneer, Volocopter, conducted a crewed public test flight in front of hundreds of spectators at Incheon Airport in Seoul, South Korea.
As part of the 2021 K-UAM Confex, the 5-minute flight trial covered approximately 3 kilometers and reached a maximum altitude of 50 meters and a maximum speed of 45 km/h. One week earlier, on 11 November, the air taxi company completed a public test flight at Gimpo International Airport. It was the first-ever crewed public test flight of an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) air taxi in the Republic of Korea.
Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter, said, “We are very excited to have flown our air taxi in South Korea not once, but twice in the last week, which is great to increase public awareness on urban air mobility. As a new mode of transport, air taxis complement the existing mobility solutions and let people reach their destinations faster and more comfortably in megacities such as Seoul.”
UAM refers to a new mode of urban transportation that uses eVTOL aircraft to move people or goods within lower urban and suburban airspaces, helping relieve the strain on increasingly congested city roads in a sustainable manner.
As a UAM industry leader, Volocopter’s 2011 flight was the first crewed eVTOL flight in aviation history and has developed a family of electrically powered aircraft that can transport passengers (the VoloCity and VoloConnect) and goods (the VoloDrone). It is the first and only eVTOL company globally to have obtained both design and production organization approvals from European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
Volocopter will next display its VoloCity to the public at the CoMotion LA event in Los Angeles, USA, and the European Rotors event in Cologne, Germany, both of which take place from 16-18 November.
About Volocopter
Volocopter is building the world’s first sustainable and scalable urban air mobility business to bring affordable air taxi services to megacities worldwide. With the VoloCity, the company is developing the first fully electric “eVTOL” aircraft in certification to transport passengers safely and quietly within cities. Volocopter leads and cooperates with partners in infrastructure, operations, and air traffic management to build the ecosystem necessary to ‘Bring Urban Air Mobility to Life’.
In 2011, Volocopter performed the first-ever crewed flight of a purely electric multicopter and has since showcased numerous public flights with its full-scale aircraft. The most notable have been the public test flights at Singapore’s Marina Bay in October 2019 and the world’s first autonomous eVTOL flight in Dubai 2017. Volocopter is also developing products for the logistics space with their heavy-lift cargo variant, the VoloDrone.
Founded in 2011 by Stephan Wolf and Alexander Zosel, Volocopter has 400 employees in offices in Bruchsal, Munich, and Singapore. The company has raised a total of €322 million in equity. Volocopter’s investors include Daimler, Geely, DB Schenker, BlackRock, and Intel Capital amongst others.
Find out more at: www.volocopter.com
