Delta Air Lines partners with Joby Aviation to deliver home-to-airport transportation to customers

Fol­low­ing on from our sto­ry yes­ter­day about Joby tak­ing a ham­mer­ing on the Stock Mar­ket and Bleeck­er Street Research’s report head­line: “Joby Avi­a­tion (JOBY): Uber Meets Tes­la In The Sky Is Set To Crash And Burn,” this does not appear to have deterred Delta Air Lines.

Delta is embark­ing on an oper­a­tional part­ner­ship with Joby Avi­a­tion to deliv­er sus­tain­able home-to-air­port trans­porta­tion to its cus­tomers, begin­ning in New York and Los Ange­les.

The com­pa­nies will inte­grate a Joby-oper­at­ed ser­vice into Delta’s cus­tomer-fac­ing chan­nels, pro­vid­ing cus­tomers who trav­el with Delta through New York and Los Ange­les the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reserve a seat for short-range jour­neys to and from city air­ports.

Delta has made an upfront equi­ty invest­ment of $60 mil­lion in Joby, with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand the total invest­ment up to $200 mil­lion as the part­ners achieve sub­stan­tive mile­stones on the devel­op­ment and deliv­ery of the ser­vice. The part­ners will work togeth­er to cre­ate a seam­less book­ing, sim­pli­fied tran­sit and greater time sav­ings.

This will run along­side Joby’s stan­dard air­port ser­vice in pri­or­i­ty mar­kets. The part­ner­ship will be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive across the US and UK for five years fol­low­ing com­mer­cial launch, with the poten­tial to extend that peri­od.

Delta CEO Ed Bas­t­ian said: “We have found in Joby a part­ner that shares our pio­neer­ing spir­it and com­mit­ment to deliv­er­ing inno­v­a­tive, seam­less expe­ri­ences, and this is a ground­break­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for Delta to deliv­er home-to-air­port ser­vices to cus­tomers.”

Joby Founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt added: “We share Delta’s unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to deliv­er­ing seam­less and sus­tain­able jour­neys to cus­tomers, and its his­to­ry of inno­va­tion, along with its vast oper­a­tional exper­tise and lead­er­ship on cli­mate change.”

Joby’s air­craft has flown more than 1,000 test flights, demon­strat­ing its range, speed, alti­tude and low noise pro­file. The com­pa­ny was the first eVTOL com­pa­ny to be grant­ed a G‑1 (Stage 4) Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Basis for its air­craft by the FAA and recent­ly received its Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Delta chief cus­tomer expe­ri­ence offi­cer Alli­son Aus­band con­tin­ued: “Our work with Joby is the lat­est in a series of ways we are mak­ing the expe­ri­ence of trav­el more seam­less, enjoy­able and wait-free.”