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Joby Aviation and NASA simulation Demonstrates Up To 120 Air Taxi Operations Per Hour in Busy Airspace

Joby Avi­a­tion has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a series of air traf­fic sim­u­la­tions with NASA’s Ames Research Cen­ter, locat­ed in the heart of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Sil­i­con Val­ley.

The sim­u­la­tions eval­u­at­ed how air taxi oper­a­tions can be inte­grat­ed into today’s air­space, includ­ing at busy air­ports, using exist­ing air traf­fic con­trol (ATC) tools and pro­ce­dures.

The activ­i­ty took place at NASA’s Future Flight Cen­tral, a high-fideli­ty vir­tu­al tow­er facil­i­ty offer­ing a 360- degree view of a real-time sim­u­la­tion of an air­port, where a team of NASA and Joby engi­neers, as well as pilots and air traf­fic con­trollers, sim­u­lat­ed traf­fic pat­terns at Dal­las Love Field (DAL) and Dal­las-Fort Worth (DFW) air­ports, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of com­plex and busy air­space.

Tom Pre­vot, Air Taxi Prod­uct Lead at Joby, said: “Work­ing along­side our NASA col­leagues, we have now demon­strat­ed in a real-world sim­u­la­tion how air taxi oper­a­tions can take place in today’s air­space sys­tem, along­side active air­port traf­fic, using tools and pro­ce­dures cur­rent­ly avail­able to air traf­fic con­trollers.

“These suc­cess­ful sim­u­la­tions were made pos­si­ble by years of care­ful plan­ning and col­lab­o­ra­tion between two orga­ni­za­tions com­mit­ted to redefin­ing what is pos­si­ble, and we’re proud to be paving the way towards the scaled com­mer­cial­iza­tion of air taxis in the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem.”

The sim­u­la­tions have been joint­ly devel­oped by Joby and NASA air­space engi­neers, fol­low­ing a mul­ti-year air­space study, test­ed sce­nar­ios with dozens of eVTOL air­craft per hour fly­ing into and out of the com­plex, busy air­space in the Dal­las-Fort Worth (DFW) region using today’s air­space sys­tem.

Dur­ing the sim­u­la­tion, par­tic­i­pat­ing teams of con­trollers vir­tu­al­ly test­ed the abil­i­ty to inte­grate up to 120 eVTOL oper­a­tions – arrivals or depar­tures – per hour from DFW’s Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal Area, along­side the airport’s exist­ing traf­fic. Up to 45 sim­u­lat­ed eVTOL air­craft were simul­ta­ne­ous­ly aloft in DFW’s Class B air­space dur­ing the activ­i­ty.

Fol­low­ing sce­nar­ios devel­oped by NASA and Joby air­space engi­neers, par­tic­i­pat­ing con­trollers employed some of the high­ly-struc­tured routes and pro­ce­dures used today in busy low-alti­tude air­space regions, includ­ing Let­ters of Agree­ment and ded­i­cat­ed con­troller posi­tions to scale air taxi oper­a­tions with­out impact­ing exist­ing traf­fic.

NASA and Joby engi­neers host­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the FAA and the Nation­al Air Traf­fic Con­trollers Asso­ci­a­tion (NATCA) to observe the sim­u­la­tion.

More details on the sim­u­la­tion are avail­able on NASA’s web­site and NASA will pub­lish a com­plete analy­sis of the sim­u­la­tion results next year, shar­ing data with the indus­try and the FAA.

Pic­ture cap­tion: At NASA’s Future Flight Cen­tral vir­tu­al tow­er facil­i­ty, Joby and NASA com­plet­ed a series of air­space sim­u­la­tions with a team of par­tic­i­pat­ing air traf­fic con­trollers eval­u­at­ing how air taxi oper­a­tions can be inte­grat­ed into today’s air­space. Cred­it: Joby Avi­a­tion.

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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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