Boeing has been in the news lately and not always for positive reasons, but a new announcement about a partnership with Kitty Hawk reveals that both companies are teaming up to further develop urban air mobility (UAM). This cooperation could help Boeing regain some positive momentum while giving Kitty Hawk a jump start in the world of electric air mobility.
The Boeing Kitty Hawk Cora. Image courtesy: Boeing / Kitty Hawk
Boeing Gets Cozy With Kitty Hawk
It’s understandable Boeing is eager to move away from its very poor handling of the fatal crashes its 737 MAX. By showing it is working for our UAM future, the company said it was focusing on “future efforts to advance safe urban air mobility” on its press release.
And that means working with Kitty Hawk’s Cora division — the 2-person electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) UAM air taxi we wrote about previously. Although Kitty Hawk has been around for some time in eVTOL years, the Cora was introduced last year in March. Since then, Kitty Hawk says it has accumulated more than 700 test flights
Besides the Cora, Kitty Hawk is also working on the Flyer, an ultralight aircraft the group calls a “personalized flight vehicle”. With Boeing’s Personal Air Vehicle, we wonder which acronym will win, PAV or PFV? Hop down to the comments to weigh in.
Back to more important matters, Boeing NeXt VP & GM Steve Nordlund said:
“Working with a company like Kitty Hawk brings us closer to our goal of safely advancing the future of mobility. We have a shared vision of how people, goods and ideas will be transported in the future, as well as the safety and regulatory ecosystem that will underpin that transportation.”
Image courtesy: Cora
Kitty Hawk, Boeing & Air Zealand?
Perhaps the first clean eVTOL will be introduced down under by New Zealand’s airway as a Kitty Hawk Boeing? Stranger things have happened and certainly, this new industry is no different than countless others that have been disrupted in years past. Personal aviation is in the middle of a drastic shift as various industry players reorganizes in a push to build the foundation for tomorrow’s UAM.
The air taxi service industry is taking many sizes, shapes, and means of transportation to get patrons from point A to Z. They don’t care if the ultimate solutions ends up being one with or without pilots. Tomorrow’s UAM will be backed by years of expertise carried forward from the current aviation industry. Hopefully, the new UAM world will heed the difficult lessons from the unfortunately long list of aviation tragedies as it moves towards a more robust control platform.
Source: Boeing
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