Overair has hope that its flying taxi services could be up and running at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport as early as 2026, in time for when the city hosts the FIFA World Cup.
Santa Ana-based Overair last November signed two separate memorandums of understanding with DFW Airport and the city of Arlington to explore the development of electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs, in North Texas.
The collaborations mark the first-ever direct partnership between a city in Texas and an eVTOL manufacturer, according to Overair.
Overair has also signed a partnership with Clay Lacy Aviation, a provider of private jet charter and aircraft management services, to establish eVTOL operations at both John Wayne Airport and Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles.
Air Shuttle Service
The 2026 World Cup, in which some matches will be held in Dallas and Houston, is a viable target date to start flying passengers in Overair’s eVTOL aircrafts, according to Texas officials.
“We believe the certification should start coming along in 2024-25, so there could be flights in early 2026—that’s our goal,” Paul Puopolo, executive vice president of innovation at DFW Airport, said to Cities Today last month.
Puopolo said that DFW Airport has already identified a location for air taxi services to take place at the airport.
The early models of the aircraft will “accommodate anything from a pilot and a passenger to a pilot and three passengers” with some of the bigger models fitting up to seven passengers, according to Puopolo.
Forbes Questions
It’s not been all good news for Overair of late.
An article from Forbes Magazine last month reported that Overair was running low on capital and that its employees were quitting en masse, attributing these issues in part to delays in flight testing of its five-passenger Butterfly eVTOL aircraft.
The company’s yet to respond to the report and did not return calls from the Business Journal for comment.
Overair counted about 140 employees at its 100,000-square-foot facility in Santa Ana as of last year.
The company was co-founded by Abe Karem, often referred to as the “drone father” for his role in inventing the Predator drone, which revolutionized aerial warfare.
The company has raised approximately $170 million from South Korean conglomerate and regular investor Hanwha Group, since its spinoff from Karem’s Lake Forest-based company Karem Aircraft Inc. in 2019.
Last December, Overair completed the first full-scale prototype of the Butterfly, which has a range of over 100 miles, the ability to recharge quickly between trips and a top speed of around 200 miles per hour.
Overair also announced that it would begin flight testing at the company’s Victorville facility in early 2024, but former employees “doubted the prototype could get off the ground this year,” according to the Forbes article.
