Eve, Flapper to develop UAM ops in Latin America

Eve Urban Air Mobility Solutions, an Embraer company, and Flapper Tecnologia, an independent on-demand private aviation platform, announced a partnership aimed at developing the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) market in Latin America. The partnership will serve as a proof-of-concept (POC) for future regional operations of Eve’s electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, also known in the market as EVA (Electrical Vertical Aircraft). Eve expects to provide Flapper with up to 25,000 hours of flight time per year across key cities in South America, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte (all in Brazil), Santiago de Chile (Chile), Bogotá (Colombia), and Mexico City (Mexico). The parties plan to foster a culture of on-demand UAM booking using helicopters to serve as data collection for the future development of the EVA. This agreement has the potential to bring up to 25 of Eve’s Electric Vertical Aircraft (EVA) to Flapper’s platform. Eve unveils a unique value proposition by offering a suite of agnostic UAM products and services. Backed by Embraer’s more than 50-year history of proven track record aircraft manufacturing and certification, Eve offers a zero-emission, low noise, and community-friendly EVA based on a simple and intuitive human-centric design. Eve continues to reach development milestones, including the first flight of the engineering simulator in July 2020, and a proof of concept in October 2020. In parallel, Eve’s Urban Air Traffic Management (UATM) project reached a new milestone in its collaboration with the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to develop a scalable environment needed to host UAM flights. “Flapper’s regional reach combined with its disruptive on-demand technology make it an ideal partner for the future expansion of our operations in Latin America. Deploying Eve’s zero-emission aircraft will enable the company to democratise UAM to new stakeholders and key markets, such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. This is an important building block to extend Eve’s global leadership in the UAM space,” said Andre Stein, President & CEO of Eve. “Six out of the 10 largest urban helicopter fleets are in Latin America and the region currently boasts the densest helicopter infrastructure in the world. Together with a traditionally high acceptance of UAM in our operating markets makes us perfectly positioned to lead the aerial mobility revolution in the sector. Thanks to our partnership with Eve, we hope to expand our current pay-per-seat network and implement a smooth transition towards more agile and efficient supply types. We believe that the Eve team’s track record of providing reliable AAM solutions at record speeds is of utmost importance to the success of similar projects anywhere in the world,” said Paul Malicki, CEO of Flapper. The deployment of Eve aircraft across the Flapper network is subject to the parties entering into definitive final agreements. For Editorial Inquiries Contact: Editor Matt Driskill at [email protected] For Advertising Inquiries Contact: Head of Sales Kay Rolland at [email protected]