Eve Urban Air Mobility Solutions is including the Beacon maintenance coordination platform in its portfolio of services for eVTOL aircraft operations. Beacon has been developed by the EmbraerX technology incubator unit of Eve’s parent company to connect operators, maintenance providers, aftermarket suppliers, and manufacturers to get aircraft back into service quickly after unscheduled maintenance events.

Beacon aims to be a commercially neutral platform that brings together a wide variety of capabilities to support real-time collaboration in response to operational circumstances. Eve feels this process will make a valuable contribution to urban air mobility flight operations, which are expected to scale up to include thousands of new eVTOL aircraft.

“This initiative highlights an important pillar of our strategic plan as it reinforces the relevance of innovation and diversification for the company’s sustainable growth,” said Embraer president and CEO Francisco Gomes Neto. “Eve and Beacon are bringing new capabilities to the market, creating disruptive solutions for urban air mobility.”

By the end of April, the Beacon platform had been involved in resolving more than 35,000 unscheduled maintenance cases involving around 1,000 users. Embraer believes these numbers will increase significantly as the negative impact of the Covid pandemic subsides.

Eve, which also came out of the EmbraerX division, aims to certify a four-passenger eVTOL aircraft by 2026. The company has recently reached sales and service agreements with two prospective eVTOL air taxi providers, Blade Air Mobility and Helisul Aviation. It is also working with another Embraer subsidiary called Atech to develop air traffic management infrastructure for urban air mobility.