By Lee Hyo-sik
Korean Air, the country’s largest flagship carrier, said Monday that it will commercialize an unmanned tilt-rotor aircraft in cooperation with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), making Korea the first nation to do so.
The company said it has signed a business agreement with the state-funded aviation research institute to put an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using a tilt rotor into commercial use at BEXCO in Busan.
A tilt-rotor aircraft can land and take off like a helicopter, and fly like an airplane.
In November last year, KARI developed and unveiled an unmanned tilt-rotor aircraft, making Korea one of the few countries in the world with the technology for vertical take-off and landing planes using helicopter-like rotors at their wingtips.
The KARI-developed plane is 5 meters long and has a 7-meter-wingspan with a top cruising speed of 500 kilometers per hour.
The institute is scheduled to downsize the aircraft to about 60 percent of its original form by June to develop a smaller variant dubbed the TR-6X.
Both Korean Air and KARI will then work together to commercialize the TR-6X.
“The United States is the only country that operates tilt-rotor aircraft. But it has not commercialized an unmanned one yet. If we succeed in putting the UAV using a tilt rotor into operation with KARI, we will be the first to do so in the world,” a Korean Air spokesman said.