Lilium progresses towards Design Organisation Approval from EASA after second audit

Lil­i­um has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the sec­ond Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (DOA) audit by the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA). 

DOA is a fun­da­men­tal require­ment for all com­mer­cial air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers and enables achieve­ment of type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of an air­craft, and com­ple­tion of the audit demon­strates that Lil­i­um is fol­low­ing the rig­or­ous design process­es agreed with EASA, rep­re­sent­ing a fur­ther mile­stone on Lilium’s path to type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and sub­se­quent ser­i­al pro­duc­tion of its con­for­mant air­craft. 

Two fur­ther EASA DOA audits will be required for Lil­i­um to receive the organ­i­sa­tion­al approval, which com­ple­ments the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and devel­op­ment pro­gram, with the fourth and final EASA DOA audit and grant­i­ng of EASA DOA antic­i­pat­ed to coin­cide with type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Lil­i­um Jet. 

Ear­li­er this month, Lil­i­um sub­mit­ted a full set of ‘Means of Com­pli­ance’ pro­pos­als to EASA for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its Lil­i­um Jet which pre­pares the way for the next phase of type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry agree­ment.

The Means of Com­pli­ance are an essen­tial part of the pro­gram by which an air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er demon­strates a new air­craft type con­forms with air­wor­thi­ness require­ments pre­scribed in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied by EASA. 

Lil­i­um ini­tial­ly applied in 2017 for EASA DOA, and in par­al­lel, Lil­i­um is work­ing toward the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its Lil­i­um Jet, for which the EASA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis (CRI-A01) was received in 2020. 

Lil­i­um is pur­su­ing con­cur­rent cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its Lil­i­um Jet with the US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion under the pro­vi­sions of the Bilat­er­al Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agree­ment between the Euro­pean Union and the US. 

In March last year, Lil­i­um became the lat­est eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er to go pub­lic, after announc­ing a spe­cial-pur­pose acqui­si­tion com­pa­ny (SPAC) merg­er with Qell Acqui­si­tion Corp, led by the for­mer pres­i­dent of Gen­er­al Motors North Amer­i­ca Bar­ry Engle.

As part of the SPAC merg­er, Engle will join Lilium’s Board of Direc­tors – which also includes for­mer Air­bus CEO Tom Enders.