Emirates and aviation partners to build worlds first Aviation X-Lab

In the continued effort to achieve the vision of ‘UAE Centennial Plan 2071’, Emirates airline and a consortium of industry partners are announcing a partnership to build the world’s first sector-wide Experimental X-Lab to co-create the next era of human transportation at Area 2071.

The Aviation X-Lab is a historic effort to host airlines, manufacturers, ground logistics, regulators, engineers, academics, and startups under a single roof in order to envision a new transportation paradigm and seek solutions that no single organization or programme has had the resources to deliver on their own.

Starting this year, the Aviation X-Lab at Area 2071 will host industry summits to co-create industry shaping challenges. It will then solicit applications from internal teams, independent engineering teams, academics, and startups, to help address these challenges by spending a full year working with the senior-most industry executives and regulators to ideate new technologies and business theories, run experiments, and develop prototypes.

Finalist teams from around the world will meet in Dubai each April for an annual event where they will pitch their concepts. Winners of the pitch event will relocate to Dubai the following month along with their corporate and government counterparts to begin a rigorous curriculum co-created with the world’s top academic and innovation institutions.

Area 2071 was launched by UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to become the experimental nucleus of the Centennial Plan 2071.
Emirates airline and Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said: “We look forward to the Aviation X-Lab initiative, which will enable Emirates to co-create high impact solutions with our industry partners that will propel the UAE’s aviation sector to new heights, and unlock the possibilities of an interconnected world.”

“With the addition of the Aviation X-Lab, Dubai is further proving itself as the largest X-Lab in the world. We are proud to share our experience with aviation, as home to the world’s international largest airline, with the aviation community,” said Cabinet Affairs and Future Minister and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s Executive Office Chairman Mohammad Abdulla Al Gergawi.

Applications for the inaugural Aviation X-Lab will open in November with the first pitches to be presented to the public in April of 2018.