Joby Aviation says it has notched another major milestone on the path to type certification for its five-seat eVTOL aircraft. The company today announced it has completed the second of five stages in the FAA type certification process by completing its means of compliance, a document that outlines all the ways in which the company plans to comply with the safety rules that were defined in its certification basis.
According to Joby, the FAA has now accepted 94 percent of its means of compliance requirements. The company considers this stage to be “essentially complete,” because “it is typical for a small portion of the means of compliance to remain open to allow for further collaboration on minor design changes and improvements that may occur later in the certification process,” Joby officials said in a February 9 statement.
As the first Western eVTOL air taxi developer to reach this critical milestone, Joby appears to have strengthened its position as a front-runner among companies seeking FAA type certification for new eVTOL aircraft. Joby was also the first company to have its certification basis approved and published in the Federal Register.
“Certification is an integral part of everything that an aerospace company does, and with the achievement of this critical milestone, we’re now able to confidently focus our efforts on closing the remaining certification plans and completing the testing required to certify our aircraft,” said Didier Papadopoulos, head of aircraft OEM at Joby.
The next stage of Joby’s certification process will be the submission of its certification plans to the FAA. During this stage of certification, a company must come up with a plan to demonstrate how it will meet the means of compliance by testing the aircraft and its various subsystems. The company says it has already made substantial progress with this stage, having submitted to the FAA four area-specific certification plans and its first equipment-level qualification test plan.
Meanwhile, Joby has already made a head start on the fourth stage of certification, in which the company must complete thousands of tests and inspections in accordance with the certification plans drawn up in the third stage. For the fifth and final stage of certification, the FAA must analyze and verify the results of the tests completed in stage four. When this is complete, the FAA will issue Joby a type certificate.
Joby has said it plans to complete the type certification process in late 2024, with commercial air taxi operations starting in 2025. However, initial military operations for U.S. defense customers could commence in 2024.
The FAA published Joby’s proposed type certification basis in the U.S. Federal Register in November 2022. It published a summary of the five stages of type certification in its 2Q 2022 shareholder letter.
