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Lilium submits EASA proposals for how its eVTOL aircraft will comply with certification requirements

Lil­i­um has sub­mit­ted a full set of ‘Means of Com­pli­ance’ pro­pos­als to the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its Lil­i­um Jet. 

Sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry agree­ment, this pre­pares the way for the next phase of type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and the sub­mis­sion rep­re­sents a mile­stone on the path to cer­ti­fy­ing Lilium’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary eVTOL air­craft.

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. 

EASA’s type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process con­sists of the fol­low­ing main steps:

1. Tech­ni­cal Famil­iari­sa­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Basis

2. Estab­lish­ment of the Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram

3. Com­pli­ance demon­stra­tion

Lil­i­um com­plet­ed the first step and received its EASA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis (CRI-A01) in 2020.

As part of the sec­ond step, EASA and Lil­i­um are required to define and agree on the means to demon­strate com­pli­ance of the air­craft type with each require­ment of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis. 

Sub­mit­ting Means of Com­pli­ance pro­pos­als to EASA rep­re­sents an impor­tant mile­stone towards com­ple­tion of that sec­ond step and moves Lil­i­um clos­er to type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Before any new­ly devel­oped air­craft mod­el enters into oper­a­tion, it must obtain type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the respon­si­ble air­wor­thi­ness author­i­ty. 

Lil­i­um is pur­su­ing type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with EASA and con­cur­rent type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion val­i­da­tion with the U.S. Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion under the pro­vi­sions of the Bilat­er­al Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agree­ment between the EU and US.

Last Month, Net­Jets and avi­a­tion train­ing firm Flight­Safe­ty Inter­na­tion­al signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with Lil­i­um for the right to pur­chase up to 150 eVTOL air­craft.

The arrange­ment will intro­duce more options to Net­Jets own­ers to com­ple­ment their exist­ing flight pat­terns, with the com­pa­ny antic­i­pat­ing to sup­port Lil­i­um with a pri­vate sales cam­paign for indi­vid­u­als to pur­chase the Lil­i­um Jet.

Lil­i­um will also part­ner with Flight­Safe­ty Inter­na­tion­al to pro­vide prod­ucts and ser­vices, such as course­ware, indus­try lead­ing immer­sive and mixed real­i­ty train­ing devices and crew train­ing to sup­port eVTOL oper­a­tions.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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