+VIDEO The German Lilium Jet electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) two-seat prototype made its first flight today.
The Eagle prototype performed a range of complex manoeuvres including the mid-air transition from hover mode to wing-borne forward flight, said Lilium. Here’s the video of the flight…
“Seeing the Lilium Jet take to the sky and performing sophisticated manoeuvres with apparent ease is testament to the skill and perseverance of our amazing team,” said a spokesman.
“We have solved some of the toughest engineering challenges in aviation to get to this point. The successful test flight programme shows that our ground-breaking technical design works exactly as we envisioned. We can now turn our focus to designing a 5-seater production aircraft.
“We are now developing a larger, 5-seater version of our Lilium Jet, designed for on-demand air taxi and ride-sharing services.
“A typical journey with the Lilium Jet will be at least 5x faster than by car, with even greater efficiencies in busy cities. So a flight from Manhattan to New York’s JFK Airport will take around 5 minutes, compared to the 55 minutes it would take you by car.”
Lilium Jet