Archer Aviation Says European Air Regulations “Not Good For Business!”
The ever-present ongoing niggles between the eVTOL industry and the world’s air regulators is rather like a game of table-tennis. One moment the U.S Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is criticised for “dragging their feet” and “making regulations even tougher”, where rival the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is viewed as the “ideal regulatory path to follow” and the next the European regulator is criticised as “not good for business.”
In a surprise statement this week from Archer co-Founder and CEO, Adam Goldstein, he told the financial media outlet, ft.com, during an interview that the new EU regulatory standard, “risks shutting down the electric aircraft market.”
Goldstein remarked that certification guidance published by EASA would make it “extremely hard” to bring the new vehicles to market… warning “its rules threatened to put the fledgling sector out of business.”
What is more surprising is that in six days time both Archer and Goldstein will be at the Paris Airshow. The timing of such an outburst could be viewed as either misjudged and ill-timed or politically astute by placing pressure on EASA when the world’s eVTOL industry is on show in the regulators’ own backyard.
Goldstein is quoted in the article, “EASA has openly said, We know our regulations are harder and not good for business, and we don’t care.” What is puzzling is there has been criticism of the FAA from the industry during the last year for changing its regulations for eVTOLs, making it harder to gain full certification too.
It seems both regulators are in the doghouse.
Goldstein criticised the EASA regulation as too strict, saying there was no point in fostering an industry only “to regulate it out of business”, when it was possible to take “an approach that can still be at the highest levels of safety, but . . . that is more amendable to allowing companies to build around.”
The FT explains, “EASA is the only regulator to have published formal guidance for eVTOLs offering commercial services to passengers. Its approach assumes relatively large flight volumes over urban areas. The agency has told developers to adopt the same standard for safety as the one applied to large commercial jetliners: the chance of just one catastrophic failure in 1 billion flight hours, or “10 to the minus nine”.
Midnight Blues
In response to Goldstein’s criticism the European Air Regulator states, “Archer’s opinion is that high safety standards are not good for business. This point of view is not shared by EASA.”
The FT goes on, “The EU regulator went on to say the safety objectives it had set out were based on “risk assessment” and had been “evaluated to be equivalent to bus transportation safety, once eVTOL operations have reached a moderate scale”. It adds, “EASA’s opinion is that setting such safety objectives enables business and protects future businesses.”
Meanwhile, the FAA has yet to publish a standard. Industry publications have reported it was likely to set the target safety level at one catastrophic failure per 10mn or per 100mn flight hours. The agency has said eVTOLs are mechanically simpler than commercial jets, allowing for a regulatory approach that uses certification standards “applicable to the size and complexity of aircraft and types of operations involved”.
Therefore, the FAA’s approach to eVTOLs “is philosophically different than EASA’s, but no less safe”, U.S officials state. The regulator believes it can reach the same level of safety in operations without the same requirements for back-up systems to be built into aircraft because it will have accounted for risks in other ways, including counting the pilot as an extra safeguard.
Not surprisingly, Goldstein praises the FAA. He told the FT, “It’s been a real positive for US-based companies because the regulator is so on-board.” A different viewpoint, certainly, from some other eVTOL industry heads.
The article continues, “Last Wednesday the regulator proposed rules that lay out training protocols for pilots of aircraft that lift off vertically and then switch to winged flight. David Boulter, the FAA’s acting administrator for aviation safety, said the proposals will “safely usher in this new era of aviation and provide the certainty the industry needs to develop”.
The two regulators are in talks to agree on the very important common certification approach towards the sector to ensure companies can fly between different regions. They meet again next week in Cologne.
Meanwhile, disagreement over target safety levels has created a point of contention among competitors in the industry. European companies argued in public filings submitted last year that U.S companies should have to meet EASA’s safety standards. They also raised concerns about the lack of detail contained in airworthiness criteria set out by the FAA for some of their US rivals. For the eVTOL industry to succeed, it is vital the two regulators find common ground.
To conclude, whether this contention is just handbags at dawn or something more serious is brewing, is unknown yet, but the pressure for the eVTOL industry to gain full certification and begin commercial operations, as soon as possible, before the money runs out, is a major reality, where the conflict between “absolute safety” and “absolute financial necessity” is ever-present.
(News Source: www.ft.com)
(Top image: Adam Goldstein)
