ENAIRE, Spain’s aviation authority, has announced plans to introduce eco-friendly flying taxis to the Catalan capital by 2022.

The multi faceted proposal will aim to become the building block to revolutionising business and culture across Spain.

Enaire is working alongside two organisations to bring air taxis into Spain, European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation and private tech company Everis, under the banner of the Horizon 2020 initiative.

The aim will be to help develop viable solutions to begin testing airborne transport and passenger vehicles by 2021, with a full roll out one year later.

The cities penciled in for the first test flights are Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela.

One man passenger drones will be introduced alongside un-manned parcel and goods carrying drones, similar to the ones used by Amazon in the US.

Enaire hopes that the introduction of state of the art technologies will help revitalise the floundering economy since the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is hoped that new logistic solutions will entice private businesses back into the major cities and position Spain at the forefront of this newly developing technology.

“We need to move urban mobility into the third dimension: airspace. And we need to do it as efficiently and sustainably as we can,” said project leader Angel Luis Arias.

Arias hopes that the use of passenger carrying drones will also work towards greener cities and reduce congestion and emissions by replacing fuel burning vehicles on the roads.

Spain began investigating the use of airborne vehicles in July last year.

Spanish tech company Tecnalia unveiled a one man autonomous air taxi that can carry a 150 kilogram weight up to 15 kilometres.

Testing also began in Andalucia last month after the government of Sevilla gave permission for the Chinese EHang AVV to be tested for initial trials.

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