eVTOLs take center stage at South East Europe Aviation Summit (SEAS)

On April 22-23 I had the opportunity to attend the 2024 South East Europen Aviation Summit (SEAS) in Belgrade and deliver a keynote about advanced air mobility (AAM)

This is a major aviation event organized by Tango Six, the top aviation media platform in Serbia, covering the whole Balkan region, covering all aspects of the industry, both commercial and military.

On the air transport side of the event, besides the participation at C-level of some the top players in the industry such as Air Serbia and Wizz Air, one of the topics that attracted quite a lot of attention, both from attendees and the media, was advanced air mobility and eVTOLs in particular.

The growing interest in Serbia for the eVTOL industry is driven, in no small measure, by the prospects of Belgrade of becoming one of the industry’s launchpads in Europe on the back of Belgrade’s 2027 Expo. This international event will showcase quite a few technology advances in the Serbian capital between May and August 2027 under the title “Play for Humanity”.

Major events, such as the Paris 2024 Olympics or the 2025 Expo in Osaka, have been touted by some of the most prominent eVTOL developers as an ideal occasion to demonstrate, for real, the capabilities of their aircraft.

With Volocopter’s Paris Olympic plans now mostly ruled out (or, at the very best, severely scaled down), Osaka is shaping up to become a sort of public “World Première” for several of these innovative companies. Will Belgrade follow suit? We will see…

In the meantime, the Serbian government seems to be embracing the idea, with its finance minister, Mali Sinisa, even talking publicly about the Balkan country getting into a partnership with CityAirbus, the eVTOL arm of the European aircraft manufacturer (although not much is known about this so far!).

What is clear is that eVTOLs are hot enough in Serbia right now for me to be invited to talk about this topic on PRVA one of the country’s main news channels (talking about eVTOLs from minute 2’ of the video)

By the way, to get a feel about how the SEAS conference is like, check out this video!