European Rotors – can it fly?
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Launching a new convention/exhibition is tough. You need a great venue, lots of exciting exhibitors and lots of footfall. But the newly-announced European Rotors conference is hoping it can do this in Cologne in November.
The European Helicopter Association (EHA) and the European Aviation Safety Administration (EASA) have joined forces to create European Rotors – an event whose main objective is to bring together the two disparate, but intertwined markets of helicopters and eVTOLs.
This is not a unique idea. Last year saw Helitech rebrand as the Vertical Flight Expo and open its doors to all forms of vertical take-off aircraft.
European Rotors has bought on-board Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo, Bell, Kopter and Safran as partners to help organise the event. Incidentally, three of the five OEMs are actively developing eVTOL hardware.
“We are the platform for everything which takes off and lands vertically,” Peter Möller, chairman of EHA told Helicopter Investor. “It is a show organised by the industry, for the industry.”
The test of the conference’s success will be just how well it merges eVTOLs and helicopters. Both sectors are still seen as separate by most of the people who work in them, despite the inevitable overlap in customers, technology and application. But working with the key OEMs that cross into both industries is certainly a great start.
European Rotors will take place at Koelnmesse, Germany on the 10-12th November.
Meanwhile, Helicopter Investor is staging its own conference in London between 24-26th February. Helicopter Investor London 2020 will bring together more than 300 senior executives and key decision-makers to discuss helicopter finance, transactions and operations. There will certainly be lots to talk about.
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