In the continued effort to achieve the vision of UAE Centennial Plan 2071, Emirates airline 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 start-ups under a single roof in order to envision a new transportation paradigm and seek solutions that no single organisation 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 The Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to become the experimental nucleus of the Centennial Plan 2071.

H.H. Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and Chief Executive of Emirates Group, 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 Mohammad bin Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs and The Future and Chairman of The Executive Office of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

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.