ITA Airways, Airbus, UrbanV and Enel have announced a new partnership to promote and devise an Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) ecosystem in Italy.
The collaboration, which aims to promote the use of urban air mobility across the country, expands on a former Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) previously signed by ITA Airways and Airbus in April of 2022.
The new MOU aims to predominantly establish a joint timeline for the development of a new, comprehensive AAM ecosystem within the country, allowing eVTOL manufacturers, energy solutions providers and vertiport operators to collaborate in order to evaluate successful business models.
Francesco Presicce, Accountable Manager and Chief Technology Officer of ITA Airways commented:ITA Airways started to operate on October 2021. Since the beginning, we decided to look forward and bet on innovation. In this framework, in April 2022 ITA Airways and Airbus started a journey together, which resulted in the development of this ecosystem, today a reality.
This proves that we are on the right track to design the future of Advanced Air Mobility improving the passenger experience.
Initially, the partners plan to focus on the operation of the Airbus eVTOL CityAirBus NextGen, investigation into the standardisation of ground services (energy supply, charging infrastructures), support, service concepts, vertiports and network planning, as well as defining passenger experience models.
Balkiz Sarihan, Head of UAM at Airbus, said:At Airbus we know that a successful AAM business will require much more than just developing the vehicle, it is essential to co-create the conditions for that vehicle to be operated and supported. We have some experience in developing AAM ecosystems such as the Air Mobility Initiative (AMI) in Bavaria.
We are thrilled by this opportunity to work on the development of such an ecosystem in Italy.
