Volocopter receives POA extension and gets green light to begin serial production of its VoloCity eVTOL aircraft

Volo­copter has received the Ger­man Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Office’s Pro­duc­tion Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (POA) exten­sion that allows the pro­duc­tion of the VoloC­i­ty air­craft.

The POA was ini­tial­ly achieved in 2021 and this exten­sion, announced yes­ter­day (Thurs­day), applies to the two new Volo­copter pro­duc­tion and hangar facil­i­ties in Bruch­sal, Ger­many, which were first unveiled in April 2023. 

It now means Volo­copter has received the green light to begin ser­i­al pro­duc­tion of its VoloC­i­ty air­craft, ahead of launch­ing oper­a­tions in Paris and Rome.

Andreas Fehring, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer (COO) of Volo­copter, said: “This is a major mile­stone for us. Air­craft design and pro­duc­tion are strong­ly reg­u­lat­ed for a good rea­son: to pro­duce safe mobil­i­ty prod­ucts.

“I am pleased Volocopter’s pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty has the trust of and stamp of approval from LBA to man­u­fac­ture com­mer­cial air­craft that can be deliv­ered to cus­tomers once the VoloC­i­ty receives type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Our team has proven that we can pro­duce safe and high-qual­i­ty test air­craft, and we now look for­ward to short­en­ing our pro­duc­tion lead time for scal­ing.” 

Volo­copter says this exten­sion is an indus­try-first, which lists specif­i­cal­ly the approved pro­duc­tion of an eVTOL in the POA’s scope of work, from pro­to­typ­ing to ser­i­al man­u­fac­tur­ing.

It now has the full trust and author­i­ty to design and pro­duce the VoloC­i­ty in-house autonomous­ly and has entered the pre-ser­i­al pro­duc­tion stage of man­u­fac­tur­ing.  

Volo­copter is cur­rent­ly the world’s first and only eVTOL com­pa­ny to hold both Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (DOA) and POA. It received EASA’s DOA in 2019, fol­lowed by the ini­tial POA in 2021 with the acqui­si­tion of DG Flugzeug­bau.

Under EASA’s SC-VTOL (Spe­cial Con­di­tion VTOL) Enhanced cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cat­e­go­ry, the VoloC­i­ty will become the first com­mer­cial eVTOL with the high­est glob­al safe­ty stan­dards in avi­a­tion.

Achiev­ing this safe­ty stan­dard allows VoloC­i­ty to fly above con­gest­ed urban areas qui­et­ly and effi­cient­ly, adding an extra lay­er of alter­na­tive mobil­i­ty to the trans­porta­tion mix in cities.