At the recent Airspace World show in Geneva, Eve Air Mobility released the name of its Urban Air Traffic Management (Urban ATM) software and provided updates on the solution’s development. Named Vector, it will be an agnostic software solution designed to ‘safely address the unique air traffic and network management challenges of current and future Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations, focusing on fleet and vertiport operators, and future service providers for AAM, including Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs)’. The company is near to an operational version of the software that customers can ‘test and trial to help progress the market’.

Eve’s CEO Johann Bordais said: “Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft flights will become an established transportation mode for communities worldwide. Eve expects first deliveries and entry into service as soon as 2026 and has been addressing the airspace and air traffic management (ATM) challenges to support the introduction and growth of the market in a harmonised and safe way.”

Eve said Vector will allow eVTOLs to be integrated with other aircraft flying in low-level urban airspace from day one of operations and provide the automation needed to enable Urban Air Mobility (UAM) market scalability. To date, Eve has 14 customers for the solution, including fleet operators, vertiports, and airspace and flow management providers.

In November 2023, Eve partnered with Flexjet to conduct a simulation to validate and refine Vector’s capabilities under real-scenario conditions and better understand the software’s commercial viability and applications. The simulation took place in the UK and involved 18 flights across eight aerodromes.

The Eve-Flexjet simulation has found gaps between current ATM systems and those required to support UAM operations from Day 1, such as the lack of integration between fleet and vertiport operator systems to coordinate eVTOL flights safely and efficiently. Eve says it is therefore prioritising the development of services that address these gaps, including: integrated flight planning with airspace and vertiport resource availability; management of alternative landing locations built into the flight planning to support the endurance limitations of electric aircraft; and conformance management to inform stakeholders when flights deviate from their plan and may affect other flights.