FutureFlight

Joby Aviation has released an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) report for 2022. The publication is a first for the California-based company and appears to be the first of its kind by an eVTOL aircraft developer.

In recent years, much of the mainstream buzz surrounding advanced air mobility (AAM) has focused on small, futuristic aircraft concepts like electric air taxis and so-called “flying cars” that affluent urbanites might use to bypass traffic jams in crowded cities. While the thought of whizzing around cities like characters in The Jetsons may captivate the public’s imagination, there’s another revolution brewing in the aviation industry that is far more likely to affect the lives of ordinary people: a resurgence of regional air mobility. 

Would-be manufacturers of aircraft in what is broadly defined as the advanced air mobility (AAM) sector advance their cheerleading efforts with a relentless flow of sales commitments for products that remain anywhere between the drawing board and type certification. The deals announced are variously described as “orders” or “letters of intent,” but almost without exception, it is next to impossible to assess the solidity of these supposed transactions due to a lack of transparency by the companies announcing them.

Just like uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS, aka drones), eVTOL aircraft require access to low-altitude airspace in and around cities to operate productively. They also need to fly in existing controlled airspace alongside larger aircraft, especially in close proximity to airports.

Hybrid-electric propulsion evangelist Ampaire has published a new treatise spelling out the central tenets of what it calls, “our approach to repowering aviation.” Given the California company’s core mission to convert existing regional and utility turboprop aircraft, such as Cessna Caravans, there is an element of ‘they would say that wouldn’t they’ in some of the arguments. Nonetheless, it also provides an informative overview as to how hybrid-electric propulsion works.

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.