Australia’s unique geography of sprawling coastal cities and remote outback communities make it an ideal testbed for advanced air mobility (AAM). Add to the mix a regulator open to new ideas and a have-a-go entrepreneurial culture, and it is unsurprising that the nation has spawned several promising start-ups and caught the eye of some of the biggest names in this fast-emerging sector. These include Joby Aviation, Embraer’s Eve, and Boeing-owned Wisk Aero.
The country has long been a disruptive aviation pacesetter. A quarter of a century ago, its Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) became the first in the world to regulate the operation of civil remotely piloted air vehicles. Now, many in the AAM industry are hoping that it and sister organisation Airservices Australia will be as adventurous when it comes to approvals for a new breed of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) and other non-conventionally powered aircraft.
Several of these would-be change-makers are exhibiting at Australia’s Avalon air show, which begins on 25 March near Melbourne. Disruptive, sustainable air transport is set to be a theme. They include AMSL, a private company based in the Sydney suburb of Bankstown that is developing the Vertiia, a hybrid hydrogen- and battery-powered vertical take-off aircraft with a distinctive design. It is capable of transporting four passengers – or significantly, given the market it is targeting, a patient on a stretcher with two medical staff.
The Vertiia was conceived about seven years ago by founders Andrew Moore and Siobhan Lyndon – their initials make up the AMSL name – as a response to a Department of Defence requirement for an autonomous battlefield evacuation platform. The project attracted incubator funding from the government, explains chairman Chris Smallhorn.
Since then, the company has transitioned to the commercial market with a piloted version of the aircraft, although it is still focused on longer-distance medical evacuation (medevac), where it feels its 540nm (1,000km)-range and economics make it attractive against helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft for transporting the sick and injured from outlying communities to hospitals.
That is reflected in AMSL’s orderbook. It has taken deposits for 26 Vertiias from medevac operators including Aviation Logistics, which operates the Air Link, AirMed and Chartair brands. “Unlike some of our rivals, we’re not trying to compete in the urban market,” says Smallhorn.
The Vertiia – which AMSL describes as “the most complex civil aircraft ever developed in Australia” – flew untethered for the first time in November under battery power in the central west region of New South Wales and has since taken to the air more than 50 times. The company, which plans a hydrogen-fuelled flight later this year, is aiming for certification in 2027.
The aircraft can operate on power from both batteries and liquid hydrogen and features a box-wing configuration that “remains the most efficient sub-sonic design” as well as a patented V-tail that boosts structural integrity and will help pilots manage flutter, says Smallhorn.
While Australia lacks Silicon Valley levels of financial backing for innovative start-ups, AMSL, which employs about 70 people, has been able to attract investment from Australian energy transition specialist StB Capital Partners, and plans another fundraising round this year. Longer term, AMSL will look at territories in Australia’s “back yard” such as the Philippines and Indonesia – archipelagos where economical eVTOLs could prove a boon in connecting communities.
And it is not just conventional aviation markets such as medevac that are in AMSL’s sights. Just-in-time freight is another area where Smallhorn believes eVTOLs could change the way small manufacturers or distributors do business. “We believe there are industries that don’t even know they’re going to use aviation yet,” he remarks.
Another significant Australian AAM player is Stralis. Unlike AMSL, the young Brisbane-based business is focusing on developing a hydrogen-electric propulsion system it will retrofit on existing general aviation aircraft, although eventually it hopes to partner with a manufacturing company to build a clean-sheet 50-seat aircraft under its own brand.
American Bob Criner came up with the idea for Stralis with a colleague he worked with at Washington State-based electric powertrain developer Magnix, after concluding that hydrogen fuel cells offered a more practical solution than batteries in helping aviation with its sustainable transition. With help from US technology start-up accelerator and venture capital outfit Y Combinator, they set up Stralis three years ago with a team of about 15, mostly drawn from the AAM world.
Criner maintains the company’s polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell is six times lighter than competitors on the market and has an energy density 20 times that of a battery. “The drawbacks of batteries are that they are too heavy and have too low an energy density,” he says. The fuel cell is powered by liquid hydrogen – the same as is used in cryogenics and MRI scanners in healthcare – stored in vacuum insulated tanks on wing tips or elsewhere on the aircraft.
In December, at Brisbane’s international airport, Stralis conducted its first hydrogen-electric-powered propeller spin on a Beechcraft Bonanza ground demonstrator called Clyde. In the final quarter of this year, it hopes to follow this with a flight using the technology on Clyde’s sister aircraft Bonnie. “It will be Australia’s first hydrogen-powered flight and we’re pretty much on track for what will be a real moment in the country’s aviation history,” says Criner.
Criner believes that Australia is a “great place to develop technology and do experimental flight testing”. While home-grown finance for tech start-ups may be in shorter supply than in the USA, venture capital funds in the likes of Singapore, Tokyo and other Asian cities are available, he says. There is also a “diaspora of Australian engineers working all over the world who want to come back if the innovative, well-paid jobs are there”, says Criner.
He believes his adopted country is fast becoming a “renewables superpower” and will be one of the first to have hydrogen aircraft in its skies. “Hydrogen propulsion makes more sense here than in Europe,” Criner says. “It’s all about playing to our strengths.”
The next stage for Stralis is finessing the 250kW system that will power Bonnie the Bonanza and start selling it early next year. “That will bring in revenue,” says Criner. “Then we’ll scale up to 1MW on a Beechcraft 1900 towards the end of the decade, and then in our third step in the 2030s, we’ll move up to a 50-seater. This could be our own clean-sheet aircraft.”
Stralis is not the only Australian company developing a disruptive propulsion system. Melbourne- and Seville, Spain-based Dovetail is a venture formed by much-travelled Spanish/Australian aerospace engineer David Doral and the founders of Sydney Seaplanes, a charter operator that offers scenic flights.
Dovetail is developing an electric drivetrain – comprising an electric motor, digital control unit, power distribution unit, cooling system and proprietary battery system – that it plans to offer for installation on Cessna Caravans and eventually Beechcraft King Airs, De Havilland Canada Twin Otters and Pilatus PC-12s through supplemental type certificates (STCs). The company is displaying a mock-up of its system at its booth in the Victorian state pavilion.
By promising to reduce operating costs by 40%, Doral believes the propulsion system will make short-haul routes viable that would not be economic to operate with a conventionally powered aircraft of 10 to 20 seats. Initial customers include Norway’s Scandinavian Seaplanes, which last year signed for five conversions on Caravans that it plans to add to its fleet.
Dovetail, which has also attracted investment from the Victorian government’s Invest Victoria agency, demonstrated its powerplant in a King Air in ground tests in Seville last July, and now plans to apply for an STC for the Caravan in Australia. “Once we have that, the plan is to industralise to produce around 50 a year, initially for the Caravan and then, as we move forward, for the Twin Otter and King Air,” says Doral, who has worked for Airbus and Boeing.
He sees the potential market for Caravans alone as up to 600 aircraft – roughly a fifth of the total global fleet that typically fly routes of less than 30min. “However, in three years’ time, as the technology improves, that could go up to 800,” he says. “In four or five years, we might be able to introduce a hydrogen-electric version and then the market will boom exponentially.”
For the AAM sector to take off – particularly urban eVTOL air taxis – ground infrastructure in the form of so-called vertiports will be essential for processing passengers and providing charging. One Australian company hoping to help usher in a network of such sites is Skyportz, a venture by former planning lawyer and politician turned entrepreneur Clem Newton-Brown.
He says vertiports are the “elephant in the room” when it comes to the AAM sector. “I work on the basis that if all these [developers] are going to achieve what they are promising investors, they can’t do it without vertiports,” he says. “But no city has really looked at this issue from an urban planning perspective. Using existing helipads is one thing, but for sales to take off it depends on us being able to take people directly to the shopping centre or the office block.”
At Avalon, Newton-Brown plans to release drawings of his vertiport and “vertipad” concepts, which include design features that he says deal with the hazards of downwash and outwash from an eVTOL aircraft’s blades, making it possible to have a much smaller landing zone than a conventional helipad. “We’re going beyond pretty pictures on a website,” he jokes.
Newton-Brown has raised about A$1.5 million ($940,000) through micro-funding but is looking for investors to scale up the business. His hope is to eventually licence his intellectual property to other would-be vertiport developers in Australia and beyond. He is confident that his country will be one of the first to embrace urban air mobility. “You tend to get quicker decisions [from regulators and other public bodies] in Australia,” he says. “We are quick adopters of new technology.”
Established names in the eVTOL sector view Australia as an early and enthusiastic market for their products. They include Boeing-backed Wisk, which last year signed a memorandum of understanding with Airservices Australia, the government agency responsible for air traffic management, to explore how eVTOL aircraft, including its uncrewed, four-seat Gen 6, could be integrated into Australian airspace.
“Australia is an exciting market, with significant cities, many of which are looking at the future of their transport infrastructure,” says Catherine MacGowan, Wisk’s Asia-Pacific director. “Also, from a regulatory perspective, CASA and Airservices Australia are looking closely at this sector, and they have already been very innovative with UAS [uncrewed air systems]. It’s an enabling environment.”
Unlike most other eVTOL developers, which aim to launch their products as piloted aircraft, Wisk made the “strategic reason to go straight to autonomy and tackle this with the regulator”, she says. Wisk is also working with the Federal Aviation Administration on US certification and hopes to begin its flight-test campaign this year.
While Wisk does not have its mock-up on display at Avalon, it will be displaying a subscale model and offering show-goers a “virtual reality experience”, where, by means of a VR headset, they will be able to be “inside the aircraft” flying across Brisbane. The choice of city is significant as Wisk believes Brisbane wants to launch environmentally friendly air taxi operations in time for the 2032 Olympic Games as part of its “legacy”.
Joby last August formally launched its certification campaign in Australia. “We’re incredibly excited about the potential for air taxis to offer new and more sustainable ways to travel around Australia’s global cities,” founder and chief executive JoeBen Bevirt said at the time. Two months later, Joby met CASA and other international regulators for “a week of technology familiarisation” and will “continue to engage with them as we move closer to receiving our FAA type certification”.
Eve has also been working with CASA on a “strategic regulatory roadmap” for urban air mobility. “We see Eve and UAM as a natural progression of our investment in Australia’s aviation infrastructure dating back to 1978 when Embraer’s EMB-110 Bandeirante began operating in the market,” says Eve chief executive Johann Bordais. “We have been at the forefront of supporting the evolution of UAM in Australia through partnerships with local industry and policy leaders since 2021.”
In December, CASA released an updated version of its Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Strategic Regulatory Roadmap, first published in 2022, which is part of a wider initiative aimed at “safely and efficiently integrating emerging aviation technologies and systems into Australia’s airspace and civil regulatory framework” over the next 10 to 15 years.
The roadmap lays down likely scenarios over short, medium and longer terms. Over the next two years, it predicts, rising demand will mostly come from the light cargo industry, particularly operators of RPAS offering delivery services. Between 2027 and 2029 CASA expects to be certificating piloted AAM aircraft by type, with applications for vertiports and other supporting infrastructure, and the potential of new services to “remote and hard-to-reach communities”.
By 2030, CASA expects there to be “expansive access to lower-level airspace” for RPAS, with supporting regulations in place. “Technologies enabling extended visual line of sight and beyond visual line of sight operations in shared airspace, across both urban and rural environments, will be commonplace,” it predicts. Data will help improve safety and training requirements will change “as more complex operations introduce new technologies and increasing levels of automation”.
Meanwhile, it expects the AAM sector to “continue to mature” to include “multiple scheduled passenger transport applications supported by safe and efficient transport routes”. It adds: “The first fully autonomous aircraft may be introduced on a limited scale.”
Finally, by the mid-2030s, the regulator expects “higher numbers of RPAS… operating in the airspace”, with advancements in technology blurring the lines between RPAS, AAM and traditional aircraft. “Hybrid designs will emerge… [and]… as the AAM sector grows, we will see highly automated vehicles entering service on a small scale, gradually expanding over time,” it forecasts.
Australia’s neighbour New Zealand has also embraced the AAM sector, with its national carrier leading the way. Air New Zealand (ANZ) plans to trial battery-electric aircraft on short-range cargo flights this year with a view to replacing its entire ATR 72-600 and De Havilland Canada Dash 8-300 domestic regional fleet with electric-powered aircraft during the 2030s.
Around the middle of this year, ANZ plans to start operating Beta Technologies’ Alia CX300 conventional take-off and landing electric aircraft on short routes from the city of Hamilton, and between the capital Wellington at the bottom of the North Island to Blenheim, a town across the Cook Strait at the top of the South Island. As the crow flies, the distance is around 50nm (93km).
Early flights will carry dummy payloads to simulate loading and unloading processes and will be flown by Beta pilots with ANZ flight crew also in the cockpit, but in a “single-pilot procedural environment”. The airline wants to “get the regulator comfortable” before making an application for authorisation to begin commercial cargo flights, says Jacob Snelgrove, a former pilot and ANZ’s sustainability lead, who is heading the project. “The plan is to crawl, walk and then run.”
Unlike Europe, New Zealand’s highway and rail network is limited – a journey from Auckland to Invercargill at the bottom of the South Island can take 24h by road and ferry – so air travel is essential to connect cities and smaller communities both with cargo and passenger flights.
ANZ, says Snelgrove, has a “commitment to decarbonising”, and the airline’s regional network – three-fifths of its flights are under 350km on turboprops – means there is “a significant proportion of routes that could be done by new-technology aircraft”. As the national carrier of a nation with an abundance of renewable energy sources, “we have to be the ones to make this happen”, he says.
