America, South Korea to partner on AAM

The U.S Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) announced at the week­end, it had agreed to part­ner with the Korea Office of Civ­il Avi­a­tion (KOCA) future Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) air­craft devel­op­ment and oper­a­tions, reports reuters.com. The two coun­tries signed a dec­la­ra­tion for shar­ing infor­ma­tion on AAM projects and col­lab­o­rate to pro­mote the safe­ty over­sight of such pro­grams.

Bil­ly Nolen, the act­ing Head of the FAA, com­ment­ed, “Col­lab­o­rat­ing with our inter­na­tion­al part­ners on safe­ly inte­grat­ing these new tech­nolo­gies will cre­ate more effi­cient, sus­tain­able and equi­table trans­porta­tion options.” The announce­ment comes as com­pa­nies around the world are rush­ing to devel­op and gain reg­u­la­to­ry approval to deploy fly­ing taxis.

Bil­ly Nolen

The FAA has pre­vi­ous­ly announced sim­i­lar part­ner­ships with Japan, the UK, Cana­da, Aus­tralia and New Zealand in the Nation­al Avi­a­tion Author­i­ties Net­work to coor­di­nate cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and inte­gra­tion plans for AAM projects.

Air­lines and oth­ers are look­ing at devel­op­ing trans­port ser­vices using eVTOLs to fly trav­ellers to air­ports or on short trips between cities, allow­ing them to avoid road con­ges­tion.

Last month, the FAA issued the air­wor­thi­ness cri­te­ria that Archer Avi­a­tion will need to meet for its Mid­night air taxi to be cer­ti­fied for use. It made a sim­i­lar announce­ment in Novem­ber for Joby Avi­a­tion’s Mod­el JAS4‑1 eVTOL.

(News Source: https://www.reuters.com)

(Top image: Cour­tesy Ken Scar/U.S. Army)