PLANA establishes US branch offices in California for FAA certification

Advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) devel­op­er PLANA has estab­lished US branch­es in Sil­i­con Val­ley and Irvine, Cal­i­for­nia to facil­i­tate the FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process of the com­pa­ny’s AAM air­craft and expand into the glob­al mar­kets.

The com­pa­ny will also con­tin­ue to part­ner with oth­er Amer­i­can com­pa­nies to expand the ecosys­tem for its AAM air­craft. FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a process that ver­i­fies the air­wor­thi­ness of all parts, includ­ing design, as well as the type and pro­duc­tion qual­i­fi­ca­tion of the air­frame as a pas­sen­ger air­craft.

In the US, eVTOL air­craft are also required to meet the safe­ty stan­dards applic­a­ble to large trans­port class air­craft, and all cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process­es must be com­plet­ed before the prod­uct can be mar­ket­ed and export­ed to the US and oth­er coun­tries.

“FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is one of the most impor­tant process­es for com­pa­nies in the aero­space indus­try, and we plan to increase our inter­ac­tions in the new­ly cre­at­ed AAM mar­ket with the estab­lish­ment of a US sub­sidiary, as well as FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,” said Braden Kim, CEO of PLANA.

PLANA is a hybrid-elec­tric AAM air­craft com­pa­ny in South Korea that is devel­op­ing an air­craft that uses sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel in its tur­bo­gen­er­a­tor-based ser­i­al hybrid pow­er­train, and there­by reduces car­bon diox­ide emis­sions by more than 80% com­pared to exist­ing heli­copters.

Its air­craft can oper­ate over 500 km with five peo­ple includ­ing a pilot. The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing test flights and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of fifth-scale air­craft and plans to par­tic­i­pate in the K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge demon­stra­tion project con­duct­ed by the Kore­an Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture and Trans­port in the sec­ond half of this year.

Ear­li­er this month, Plana Aero announced that it is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Jeju Air, a leader in the low cost car­ri­er indus­try, to com­pete in the K‑UAM Grand Chal­lenge first announced at the begin­ning of last year.

Two days before, Japan­ese Ver­ti­port devel­op­er Sky­Scape announced that it will part­ner with PLANA to devel­op the first eVTOL route between Japan and South Korea.