FutureFlight

The FAA has launched a consultation on training requirements for pilots of new powered-lift aircraft. The U.S. air safety agency published its proposed rules via the Federal Register on June 14 in a document called Integration of Powered-Lift: Pilot Certification and Operations and will allow 60 days for industry comment.

Major airport infrastructure projects can take anywhere from five to 20 years, with the associated capital investment periods generally running over five years. Given that no major airport in the world currently appears to have an active plan to add vertiports for eVTOL aircraft, this begs the question as to how the companies promising commercial flights from 2025 propose to access these vital gateways.

One way or another and to varying degrees, aviation is making a transformational switch to replace fossil fuels with electricity. This is driving a need to be able to manage and distribute much higher voltages than the industry has ever needed before, and to do so safely and efficiently.

EASA has updated its proposed roadmap for the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in aviation. Three years after it published the first version of the document, Europe's aviation safety agency has now published its expanded AI Roadmap 2.0 to include “experience gained from concrete AI use cases involving stakeholders from the aviation industry, academia, and research centers,” the agency said in a statement. 

Nearly three years after the FAA released its original concept of operations for urban air mobility, it has revised its guidelines and issued an updated blueprint for how it envisions eVTOL air taxi operations integrating with the National Airspace System.

EASA has published what it says are the world’s first proposed noise certification standards for eVTOL aircraft. The proposals, known as the Environmental Protection Technical Specifications (EPTS), are applicable to eVTOL vehicles powered by multiple vertical, non-tilting, evenly distributed rotors.

New hydrogen- and electric-powered aircraft expected to enter service could require as much as 600 to 1,700 terawatt-hours of energy by 2050, which the World Economic Forum (WEF) says is equivalent to the energy generated by up to 25 of the world’s largest wind farms today—or a solar farm large enough to cover half of Belgium. In a new white paper, the organization spells out what airlines and airports will need to do to ensure that the new means of net-zero carbon propulsion are viable.

Is advanced air mobility a generational opportunity for the U.S. to reboot its leadership in the global aviation industry or a political football? In Washington, D.C., it would seem, it can be both, with the U.S. House aviation subcommittee this week turning its attention to new market entrants, such as drones and eVTOL aircraft, as it considers its position on the pending FAA reauthorization bill.

Lilium’s latest shareholder letter provides a summary of a busy 2022 for the eVTOL aircraft developer as it steps up efforts to complete type certification of its six-passenger Lilium Jet by the end of 2025.

The UK's ADS Group, a trade organization for the aerospace, defense, security, and space industry, has published a document urging government and the "aerospace ecosystem" to focus on priorities it says are needed to unlock potential for advanced air mobility.