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Rome, Italy, 27 October 2021 – Volocopter, the pioneer of urban air mobility (UAM), the infrastructures’ holding company Atlantia and Aeroporti di Roma, the largest airport operator in Italy, announced their partnership today to bring electric air taxis to Rome. Alongside the Italian Civil Aviation Authority (ENAC) and ENAV, the companies are pushing for sustainable innovation in aviation.
Urban air mobility will be part of the solution for heavily congested city centers across the world. As an entirely new mobility service, it offers transportation for people and goods that is battery powered and thus emission free in flight. Together with the Italian authorities and regulators and with Atlantia’s full support, Aeroporti di Roma, and Volocopter will raise public awareness about UAM and pave the way to bring it to Italy within the next 2-3 years. In particular, the new service will connect the international hub "Leonardo da Vinci" with various places in Rome, through vertical airports. This will allow to travel in comfort and quality, reducing greatly both the congestion of urban traffic and CO2 emissions, as the 18 engines of VoloCity operate in electric mode.
Rome is one of the first cities in Europe to commit to bringing urban air mobility services to their citizens with Volocopter. Paris committed to a collaboration to bring electric air taxis to the city in 2024.
Volocopter takes a holistic approach to UAM by developing a full ecosystem that connects the necessary components to offer electric flight in cities. The German company is the only eVTOL developer with a product portfolio of multicopter and fixed-wing designs that can be used for passenger and cargo transportation. Through cross-industrial partnerships, Volocopter covers all the aspects of the UAM ecosystem including the aircraft, the operations, as well as the digital infrastructure, VoloIQ, enabling large-scale digital visibility of the entire ecosystem.
Aeroporti di Roma is a leader in sustainable airport operations, with the clear goal to be NetZero by 2030. Recognized by UNWTO as Leaders in Responsible Travel and voted Best Airport by ACI Europe for three years in a row, the company has fully integrated sustainability into its business model to create economic, social, and environmental value, believing that the aviation sector can and must contribute to a change. From an industrial and technological point of view, ADR is strongly committed to the development of the new vertical airports and, more generally, to the rapid spread of UAM. In this perspective, UAM is regarded as a form of mobility reshaping the boundaries of flights and airports as we know them today.
Atlantia - one of the main holding companies at global level specialized in strategic investments in the airport and motorway sector, as well as in the development of new forms of sustainable mobility - is the main shareholder of Aeroporti di Roma and Aéroports de la Côte d'Azur and has recently invested in Volocopter, together with other major international companies. The development and promotion of businesses integrated with environmental sustainability and technological innovation represent one of Atlantia's main strategic lines of growth.
The VoloCity will be exhibited at Fiumicino Airport from 27 to 30 October 2021 and from 2 to 4 November 2021 in Piazza San Silvestro in Rome, Italy. These exhibitions will help the public learning about electric air taxis, seeing how this new kind of mobility will improve urban life, and experiencing it by sitting in the VoloCity.
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About Atlantia
Atlantia is a strategic investment holding company that manages motorway and airport infrastructures under concession and provides mobility services. The company mission is to make mobility more sustainable, safe, innovative and efficient, responding to society's latest needs. We want to create social, economic and environmental value by actively investing in innovative projects that make the travel experience unique and simplify people's everyday lives. Our commitment is at the heart of our strategy that sees sustainability as a new way of working, investing and managing our assets. Our impact is spread across 24 countries, encompassing more than 10,000 km of highways, 5 airports and other technology-driven services to make mobility simple and accessible, in a continuous quest for innovation.
About Aeroporti di Roma S.p.A.
Aeroporti di Roma, an Atlantia Group company, manages and develops the airports of Rome Fiumicino and Ciampino and carries out other activities associated with and supplementary to airport management. Fiumicino has two passenger terminals and is dedicated to business and leisure customers on national, international and intercontinental routes; Ciampino is mainly used by low-cost airlines, express couriers and General Aviation activities.
In 2019, ADR recorded, as an airport system, 49.4 million passengers with over 240 destinations worldwide that can be reached from Rome, thanks to the approximately 100 airlines operating in the two airports (In 2020, following the effects induced by Covid-19 on air transport, Fiumicino airport recorded just 9.8 million passengers, whilst Ciampino airport closed the year with 1.6 million passengers).
In 2020 the Airports Council International Europe awarded Leonardo da Vinci the "Best Airport Award 2020". For the third consecutive year, Leonardo da Vinci was confirmed first place out of the European hubs with over 40 million passengers. The award is added to the recognition of Airports Council International World which, in 2020, for the third consecutive year, awarded Leonardo da Vinci the "Airport Service Quality 2019" award as the most popular airport in Europe amongst the hubs with more than 40 million passengers.
ADR's management capacity is also confirmed by the awards received in 2019 by Skytrax, the main international rating and assessment company in the airport sector, which confirmed the 4 Skytrax stars obtained by Fiumicino in 2017.
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
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