News

Dubai Residents Will Soon Travel Door To Door By Flying Car

Aviation firm Aviterra has signed a deal with Dutch company PAL-V to purchase over 100 Liberty flying cars.

Published

2 years ago

March 29, 2024

Nour Nasir

dubai residents will soon travel door to door by flying car

PAL-V

A Dubai-headquartered aviation company has signed an agreement with Dutch firm PAL-V to bring their groundbreaking flying cars to the Middle East.

Aviterra, a manufacturer of aviation and aerospace components, will purchase over 100 Liberty flying cars and directly invest in the European aviation company, they revealed in a recent joint statement.

At $799,000, the two-seat Liberty is a costly vehicle predominantly aimed at high-end, corporate, and government clients and individuals with very deep pockets. Described by PAL-V as a “personal aircraft for daily medium and long-distance commutes,” the Liberty combines a gyroplane and three-wheeled car with collapsable propellers and tail fins stored on the roof.

In car mode, the vehicle can reach 100 kph in under nine seconds and has a top speed of 160 kph. Changing into aircraft modes takes around five minutes, with the helicopter-like blades rising from the roof and the tail fins extending up and out from the rear. Finally, the car’s rear jacks up, and two hatches open to deploy the rear-facing propeller.

pal-v liberty flying car

As an aircraft, the Liberty has a range of between 400 and 500 km and a maximum speed of 180 kph. It can reach an altitude of 11,000 feet and requires a runway (or straight road) of at least 200 meters for both takeoff and landing.

The current batch of Liberty flying cars run on regular gasoline but will eventually be configured as EVs “once batteries get lighter”, according to Robert Dingemanse, CEO and founder of PAL-V.

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Meanwhile, as both Abu Dhabi and Dubai continue to make strong commitments to air mobility, other companies are also keen to deploy flying cars in the Middle East. Slovakian firm KleinVision, for example, is developing a flying vehicle called the Aircar, powered by a BMW engine.

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority recently signed agreements to use air taxis in the city in the next two years, while Abu Dhabi’s Investment Office has announced plans to introduce an all-electric air taxi fleet by 2026.

News

Samsung And Spotify Offer Free Premium Deal In MENA

Nearly seven in ten streams in the region come from 18-to-34-year-olds — the audience Samsung is hoping to entice into its ecosystem.

Published

11 hours ago

August 7, 2026

Nour Nasir

Samsung

Samsung has announced a partnership with Spotify spanning the Middle East, North Africa, and Türkiye, bundling Spotify Premium with select devices across its ecosystem. The headline offer — up to four months of Premium for free — is a first for the region.

Customers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Türkiye who buy any OLED or 98-inch television, or any Galaxy S or Z series mobile device, get four months of Spotify Premium. The offer, tiered by market and device, is available at retail and on Samsung.com, and redeemed through the Samsung Promotion and Samsung Members apps.

For Samsung, the strategy is less about free music than about lock-in. The Korean tech giant’s pitch is continuity: a track starts on a Galaxy smartphone through Galaxy Buds on the commute, moves to a Samsung TV and soundbar in the living room, and stays controllable from a Galaxy Watch. The more seamlessly music travels between those devices, the harder it becomes to swap any one of them for a rival’s.

“Technology should bring people closer to the things they love, and few things connect people the way music does,” said Omar Saheb, Regional VP of Marketing and Online Business at Samsung Electronics MENA. The partnership, he added, gives customers “a genuine reason to choose Samsung for the experience, not only the product”.

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For subscribers, Premium brings the usual package: ad-free listening, offline downloads, richer audio quality on Galaxy Buds and Samsung sound devices, and Jam, which lets friends build a shared queue.

“At Spotify, we are always working to make every listening moment feel more personal, meaningful, and worth it,” said Rami Jamal, Head of Partnerships at Spotify for South Asia, Middle East, and Africa.

The demographics go a long way to explaining the strategy. Across MENA, Türkiye, and Pakistan, nearly seven in ten Spotify streams come from listeners aged 18 to 34, according to the company — precisely the audience Samsung wants inside its hardware ecosystem before buying habits harden.