Partnerships in Japan
With so many companies working on the advancements of personal air vehicles it comes to no surprise that Japan is pushing hard to be at among the leaders. Their diligent mindset and hard-working culture continues to show amazing developments for the flying industry. Although our search for the evolution of human flight leads us to new and exciting technologies on flying devices, much of our time is also focused on expanding our current network of recreational human flying experiences in Japan such as paragliding, skydiving, and other offerings listed on our website. Our journey through Japan was exciting on both the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and recreational flying sector.
As we have found in many other countries, most companies are quite secretive when it comes to sharing their information and new personal air vehicle designs. Japan is no different. After meeting with several start-ups, enthusiasts, innovators, and manufacturers, it was clear the Japan is indeed pushing forward on the race to the skies leveraging their success in the auto industry coupled with their ever growing drone technologies. The enthusiasm of young starters like teTra and Cartivator show great passion for the future of personal air vehicles and leading to investments from both government and private lenders. It was great to connect with some of these bright minds and share insights on the VTOL and recreational aviation industry.
Last month the Boeing GoFly competition announced their phase 1 top 10 winners and teTra was among one of those teams. I was fortunate to meet up with their team leader Tasuku Nakai for dinner a few months prior to the announcement and discuss his project challenges throughout the first phase. Needless to say he is a great leader who was capable of inspiring his team during those last crunch days, but more importantly his professionalism and respect towards all who surround him was enlightening. Here’s a link to their website for more information about their design and team bio (tetra-gofly.com). NexAvian has high hopes for their product as they enter phase 2 of the competition and we wish them the best of luck on this next tough journey. We look forward to adding teTra’s air vehicle to our fleet on day! See our Urban Air Mobility blog category for more information on future air taxis.
Of course, our journey would not be complete without actual human flying experiences in Japan! We were very active during these past few months and successfully added 6 new partnerships to our human flight experience offerings. Visit our map section to see our entire network locations. As with all our new relationships with operators, business is not conducted until we fly with them! We were fortunate to get some great skydiving, paragliding, hang gliding and indoor skydiving flights with our new business partners. Nothing in words can be said about flying in this beautiful country surrounded by rice fields, mountains and amazing tradition. We thank all our new partners for these great adventures and look forward to offering their services through our network.
After so much effort in learning the language, culture, and land it was very sad to leave Japan towards our next destination. But as we now board the plane for South Korea in search for more flying experience partnerships, our path remains focused on expanding our network and helping you fly!
