EASA publishes third building block on how to enable safe VTOL operation in Europe

The Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) has pub­lished pro­posed meth­ods on how to cer­ti­fy hybrid or elec­tric air taxis, and is invit­ing stake­hold­ers and inter­est­ed par­ties to review and com­ment on its plans.

In an announce­ment made ear­li­er this week, this is the lat­est mile­stone in EASA’s roadmap to enable safe VTOL oper­a­tions and new air mobil­i­ty on the con­ti­nent.

The first build­ing block pub­lished in July 2019 con­tained the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion frame­work for man­u­fac­tur­ers to start devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive air taxi vehi­cles (Spe­cial Con­di­tion VTOL).

The sec­ond block pro­posed cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments for elec­tric and/or hybrid propul­sion sys­tems and is cur­rent­ly sub­ject to a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion until 19th June, 2020. 

In a press release on their web­site, EASA said: “Now that the indus­try is mov­ing from pro­to­types into more mature designs, guid­ance on how to com­ply with the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments is need­ed.

“The third block there­fore pro­pos­es means of com­pli­ance for key cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments such as the struc­tur­al design enve­lope, flight load con­di­tions, crash­wor­thi­ness, capa­bil­i­ty after bird impact, design of fly-by-wire sys­tems, safe­ty assess­ment process, light­ning pro­tec­tion and min­i­mum han­dling qual­i­ties rat­ing. 

“These sub­jects were iden­ti­fied and dis­cussed with indus­try mem­bers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from oth­er avi­a­tion author­i­ties world­wide. The require­ments and guid­ance cater for a wide vari­ety of fly­ing vehi­cle archi­tec­tures and enable inno­v­a­tive designs. The scope for the guid­ance remains ‘per­son-car­ry­ing small VTOL air­craft with 3 or more lift/thrust units used to gen­er­ate pow­ered lift and con­trol’ ”. 

Some pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion — pre­sent­ed at the last EASA Rotor­craft & VTOL Sym­po­sium in Decem­ber 2019 — is avail­able online, and the next pack­age of guid­ance mate­r­i­al will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing EASA’s Rotor­craft and VTOL Sym­po­sium, tak­ing place between 10th-12 Novem­ber.

And in its State­ment of Issue, the EASA said ‘it is com­mit­ted to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the indus­try in the devel­op­ment of safe VTOL air­craft.’

It adds: “EASA has decid­ed to pri­ori­tise the pub­li­ca­tion of a Means of Com­pli­ance with the Spe­cial Con­di­tion VTOL and to issue them in a sequen­tial man­ner. This approach will allow EASA to focus its resources where the great­est safe­ty impact will be achieved and where the need for clar­i­ty is more urgent­ly required.

“It will fur­ther­more allow the indus­try to gain an ear­ly insight into EASA’s inter­pre­ta­tion and expec­ta­tions from the design objec­tives of the Spe­cial Con­di­tion which could have an impor­tant effect in the design deci­sions, instead of wait­ing until exhaus­tive guid­ance for the Spe­cial Con­di­tion is devel­oped.”

A host of com­pa­nies are well on their way to devel­op­ing com­mer­cial air taxi ser­vices in Europe, includ­ing Ger­man start-ups Lil­i­um and Volo­copter.

Lil­i­um have been work­ing on their VTOL air­craft, named the Lil­i­um Jet, which they say will be ful­ly oper­a­tional by 2025. With 36 all-elec­tric engines, the air taxi will seat up five pas­sen­gers includ­ing a pilot and has a range of 300km, reach­ing speeds of 300km/h.

While Volo­copter have been busy devel­op­ing their VoloC­i­ty eVTOL air­craft, which has a range of 35km and can car­ry two pas­sen­gers at speeds of 110km/h.

Speak­ing about the EASA pub­li­ca­tion on ‘means of com­pli­ance’ for eVTOLs, Daniel Wie­gand, co-founder and CEO, Lil­i­um, said: “This is a very wel­come doc­u­ment and marks one of the most impor­tant reg­u­la­to­ry steps towards eVTOL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Europe and the wide­spread adop­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy.”