In the continued effort to achieve the vision of “UAE Centennial Plan 2071”, Emirates and a consortium of industry partners have announced 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 program 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 His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai to become the experimental nucleus of the Centennial Plan 2071.

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. For more information please register at www.area2071.ae