Helicopters Airbus Helicopters partners with Voom

Voom, an on-demand helicopter service offering flights in Sao Paulo, Brazil, has announced that it has joined Airbus Helicopters with the goal of providing new urban mobility solutions for commuters. The online platform offers individual helicopter shuttle services for urban areas.

 “Urban transportation on and below ground is reaching its limits, and naturally Airbus is looking to the sky to redefine a third axis for public transportation solutions,” said Matthieu Louvot, Airbus Helicopters Executive Vice-President Customer Support and Services. “Voom will allow us to grow the usage of existing helicopters for the benefit of urban citizens and operators. With Voom we will also explore and develop new business models in order to support our innovation roadmap.”

Voom was founded in 2016 as a project of Airbus’ Silicon Valley innovation hub A³. Mega cities like Sao Paulo are forced to develop new mobility solutions due to the growing number of traffic and missing public transport.

“We are thrilled to join Airbus Helicopters to build the urban air mobility experience around the world,” said Voom CEO Uma Subramanian. “Our services provide convenient, reliable and affordable air transit to urban areas that so desperately need an alternative to traditional ground transportation. Following our launch in Brazil, we are expanding into additional cities, beginning with Mexico City early this year.”

The integration of Voom into Airbus Helicopters could become a first step for the development of a new product portfolio for the European aircraft manufacturer. Besides Voom, A³ is developing the all-electric, self-piloted VTOL aircraft Vahana. The aircraft performed a first flight on the 31^st of January, 2018. Once completely developed, VTOL aircraft like Vahana could be used as air shuttles in urban areas as an innovative form of transportation. As part of its vision for the future of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) systems, Airbus is exploring a range of urban mobility solutions. Besides Vahana, it includes a four passenger, self-piloted CityAirbus eVTOL demonstrator; the Altiscope project by A³ helping to shape future regulations and air traffic control requirements to safely integrate eVTOL aircraft into urban skies and the autonomous urban parcel delivery by drones through the Skyways project.