MUNICH—Airbus Group SE will provide helicopters to Uber Technologies Inc. for its on-demand services, the European plane maker’s chief executive said Sunday.
“It’s a pilot project, we’ll see where it goes—but it’s pretty exciting,” Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, Germany.
Mr. Enders said he hoped the cost of ordering a helicopter via Uber’s app would fall over time. The project will launch in several weeks, he said.
Uber, which runs a smartphone app service that allows people to hail cars for trips, recently expanded its offerings to include other forms of transportation, including on-demand boats.
The move signals Airbus is expanding its search for helicopter customers as demand from some of its traditional buyers has been dented by low oil prices.
Oil and gas companies have been a key market for Airbus’s most expensive commercial helicopters, but a fall in commodity prices has caused them to seek cost savings by cutting back on the purchase and use of helicopters.
Mr. Enders last month said that the helicopter sales business, which already struggled in 2014, slumped further last year.
The Wall Street Journal
