The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will work closely with its U.S. counterpart, the FAA, for the type certification of eVTOL aircraft. At the Global Urban & Advanced Air Summit on Thursday, the agencies announced that they will build on existing bilateral air safety agreements between the two countries to create a clearer path for eVTOL manufacturers to get approvals validated on both sides of the Atlantic.
Both agencies also have bilateral validation agreements in place with EASA and Transport Canada, plus working arrangements with many more countries. The agreements cover type certification and also production and operational approvals.
According to CAA policy director Tim Johnson, several eVTOL aircraft developers have expressed interest in seeking certification through the UK. During the GUAAS event, Joby Aviation’s policy and government affairs lead, Max Fenkell, announced that the California-based company has just established “an entity” in the UK as part of plans to launch air taxi services in the country.
According to Jay Merkle, executive director of the FAA’s UAS integration office, the agency is committed to adapting to new market entrants from the advanced air mobility sector. “It’s one airspace and if we start subdividing it, this will become an untenable integration problem,” he told the GUAAS conference. “We are creating the ability to manage the airspace so they can do the operations they need to do in that airspace.”
Asked about the main obstacles to the launch of eVTOL commercial operations, Merkle pointed to what he said are major changes in the powerplant and flight controls for the new aircraft. “These trickle into pilot qualifications and maintenance,” he explained. “But they [eVTOL operators] are planning airspace integration in exactly the same way as existing aircraft. Whether they are piloted or unpiloted, they plan to use VFR or IFR [flight rules] so that air traffic controllers know how to interact with them, and they need to be able to do this in dense airspace where they can safely and reasonably operate under their business models.”
Merkle advised eVTOL developers to be realistic about the time they will need to certify aircraft and get them into service. “Please risk-adjust your schedule because the first few times you go through a new [certification] process it tends to take longer than expected, and especially when it involves validation in other countries,” he commented. “It’s not that you’ll have to conform to a different set of requirements [for validation with other regulators] but early on you can expect it to take more time even though you are going to get there.”
Johnson said that the CAA intends to take a pragmatic approach to certifying new aircraft. “We are not going to adopt technical differences just for the sake of it,” he promised.
Recognizing the need for the AAM sector to recruit high numbers of pilots to support planned passenger operations, Merkle said that there is an urgent need to get approval for eVTOL flight simulators. “With simplified vehicle operations, the practical skills pilots will need will change, and that could be a challenge, but for the most part they will be much simpler to operate as some of the practical skills may no longer be required, such as controlling yaw, which is complex,” he concluded.
