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SkyDrive agree on basis for type certification for its SD-05 flying car with Japan’s MLIT

Sky­Drive has reached an agree­ment with the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) of the Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism (MLIT) to base the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for the company’s fly­ing car.

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis refers to the JCAB Air­wor­thi­ness Inspec­tion Man­u­al (AIM) Part II Revi­sion 61. It relates to Sky­Drive’s SD-05 two-seat fly­ing car, for which MLIT accept­ed an appli­ca­tion for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Octo­ber 2021, to launch an air taxi ser­vice in 2025.

Revi­sion 61 is the newest ver­sion of AIM Part II defines air­wor­thi­ness con­di­tions for fixed-wing air­craft that car­ry up to 19 pas­sen­gers and have a take­off weight of 8,618 kg or under.. It allows flex­i­bil­i­ty in the shape of the air­frame and air­craft sys­tem. It also estab­lish­es stan­dards for test­ing strength, struc­ture, and per­for­mance to val­i­date the safe­ty of the air­craft and its com­po­nents.

Sky­Drive Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Nobuo Kishi, said: “JCAB accept­ed our appli­ca­tion for type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Octo­ber 2021, since which we have held a series of dis­cus­sions with the author­i­ty regard­ing ways to devel­op and design safe air­craft and the means for test­ing them.

“We would like to express our heart­felt grat­i­tude to the gov­ern­ment of Japan and MLIT, as well as to the many organ­i­sa­tions and com­pa­nies that have sup­port­ed our project, and we are deter­mined to move ahead with the launch of a fly­ing car busi­ness and to ulti­mate­ly make air mobil­i­ty a real­i­ty for soci­ety.”

MLIT issues a type cer­tifi­cate to cer­ti­fy that the design, struc­ture, strength and per­for­mance of a new­ly devel­oped air­craft con­forms with nec­es­sary safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal require­ments. 

In Feb­ru­ary, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty and Sky­ports announced that they are work­ing togeth­er to sup­port the devel­op­ment of a new Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (CONOPS) for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty for the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau.

The ini­tia­tive aims to pro­vide a shared vision of air­space design, oper­a­tion, infra­struc­ture, and oth­er ben­e­fits to enable AAM oper­a­tion in Japan. It involves part­ners includ­ing Kane­mat­su Cor­po­ra­tion, the major Japan­ese trad­ing com­pa­ny with busi­ness­es in the aero­space indus­try, and Japan Air­lines (JAL). 

Then in March, Sky­Drive and Suzu­ki Motor Cor­po­ra­tion announced that they would col­lab­o­rate on fly­ing cars, includ­ing tech­nol­o­gy R&D, and plan­ning of man­u­fac­tur­ing and mass-pro­duc­tion sys­tems, with both com­pa­nies also con­sid­er­ing mar­ket devel­op­ment in India. 

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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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