AIR CEO confirms new research and production center; prepares for US expansion  

AIR, an Israeli advanced air mobility startup, has announced it is moving to a new 32,000 sq. ft. headquarters and production center in Central Israel. 

The new facility will concentrate the firm’s development and manufacturing activities, which include an aircraft assembly line with capacity for up to six aircraft simultaneously, an engineering lab, a composite materials workshop, and a paint shop. Aircraft testing and quality control before flight line deployment will also be performed at the site. 

AIR On June 29, 2025, AIR also announced it had signed an agreement with German engineering group EDAG, which will make aerostructures for the AIR ONE eVTOL. 

AeroTime spoke with AIR’s founder and CEO, Rani Plaut, to learn more about the firm’s current and future projects. 

Plaut explained that AIR ONE’s initial flight tests with an unmanned demonstrator aircraft had caught the attention of the US military because of its potential as a resupply drone. This has led AIR’s management to reevaluate its market strategy. 

While the core concept continues to be that of a manned light eVTOL for the civilian market, AIR is now prioritizing the development of an unmanned, cargo-only version. 

This freighter version of the AIR ONE replaces the seating compartment with a cargo bay with 70 ft3 (2 m3) of capacity and a payload with a weight of up to 250kg. 

“It’s like a flying pick-up truck,” said Plaut. 

The entrepreneur also explained that the company has already received purchase orders for 22 units of the AIR aircraft and expects to deliver between nine and 11 of them in the unmanned cargo version within the next 12 months. 

AIR has received pre-orders for 2,500 aircraft in total, 1,700 of which from the United States. The importance of the US market for AIR is underlined by the fact that the company is already preparing to invest in yet another larger production facility there. AIR’s US plant is expected to be able to produce up to 2,000 aircraft per year within three years of its opening, Plaut told AeroTime. 

“We are changing the paradigm of aviation [manufacturing] by implementing concepts of the automotive industry,” he said. 

Plaut also revealed that the company had US$6.25 million in revenue in 2024, a figure that he expects will reach the US$10 million mark in 2025. 

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