Joby “to Use ElevateOS Software Suite for Air Taxi Operations”

Joby Avi­a­tion announced this week, it has received FAA autho­ri­sa­tion to use a suite of soft­ware tools devel­oped in-house, called ‘Ele­va­teOS’, that are designed to enable high-tem­po, on-demand air taxi oper­a­tions, reports a press release.

The Ele­va­teOS oper­at­ing sys­tem, which was intro­duced dur­ing a com­pa­ny vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tion on Thurs­day (June 20th) includes pilot tools, oper­a­tions and sched­ule man­age­ment soft­ware, a mobile-first rid­er app, and an intel­li­gent match­ing engine. 

The release explains, “The match­ing engine is sim­i­lar to those used by ride-hail­ing apps today and pairs pas­sen­gers with avail­able air­craft and land­ing infra­struc­ture to deliv­er jour­neys that are as effi­cient as pos­si­ble. Joby plans to use Ele­va­teOS to sup­port its own air taxi oper­a­tions, as well as mak­ing it avail­able to select­ed part­ners who pur­chase the air­craft, as part of a wider ser­vices pack­age.” 

Dur­ing the Thurs­day pre­sen­ta­tion, Joby also cov­ered a range of oth­er prepa­ra­tions planned to sup­port the launch of com­mer­cial air taxi oper­a­tions as soon as next year, includ­ing pilot train­ing and the sim­u­la­tion of its out­lined ser­vice using a con­ven­tion­al air­craft that car­ries the same num­ber of pas­sen­gers as Joby’s air­craft. 

Util­is­ing a Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate award­ed by the FAA over two years ago, Joby has already been able to use its Ele­va­teOS soft­ware to test core aspects of its planned oper­a­tions. These are:-

: Offer­ing Joby team mem­bers a true, on-demand pas­sen­ger ser­vice, enabling them to book flights with free choice of tim­ing, ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion, using the Joby rid­er app.

: Match­ing pas­sen­gers with sim­i­lar routes to each oth­er, using automa­tion tools.

: Tak­ing pay­ments from Joby team mem­bers and exter­nal cus­tomers for whole-air­craft char­tered flights.

: Inte­grat­ing the use of the Joby pilot app, rid­er app and back-end oper­a­tional soft­ware.

Joby has been devel­op­ing and tri­alling these soft­ware tools, in-house, since pur­chas­ing Uber Ele­vate in 2021.

Eric Alli­son, Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer at Joby and for­mer Head of Uber Ele­vate, com­ment­ed, “The air taxi ser­vice we plan to deliv­er is to like any oth­er that exist­ed before. We expect trav­ellers to book on-demand and be board­ing an air­craft just min­utes lat­er, or a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence to using ground-based ride-shar­ing today. There­fore, we’ve built Ele­va­teOS from the ground up to enable high-tem­po, on-demand flights that will deliv­er true time sav­ings and seam­less mobil­i­ty to cus­tomers.”

He con­tin­ued, “Ele­va­teOS is the result of many years of iter­a­tion and real-life expe­ri­ence and we’re con­fi­dent it is the most sophis­ti­cat­ed, effi­cient and flex­i­ble suite of air oper­a­tions tools avail­able today.”

Oth­er sub­jects cov­ered by the pre­sen­ta­tion includ­ed:-

Train­ing Elec­tric Air Taxi Pilots 

Joby has devel­oped an air­craft-spe­cif­ic train­ing course that pre­pares qual­i­fied com­mer­cial pilots to fly the Joby air­craft in about six weeks. The course includes the use of immer­sive flight sim­u­la­tion train­ing devices being devel­oped in part­ner­ship with CAE. In fact, Joby has already begun offer­ing pri­vate pilot train­ing and ground school as part of its future pilot train­ing acad­e­my.

Build­ing the Main­te­nance Work­force of the Future 

Joby received its Part 145 Main­te­nance Cer­tifi­cate ear­li­er this year and is devel­op­ing a full main­te­nance, repair and over­haul (MRO) strat­e­gy to ensure max­i­mum air­craft util­i­sa­tion in glob­al mar­kets. Joby received a USD1 mil­lion grant from the FAA to sup­port this devel­op­ment.

Imple­ment­ing Rig­or­ous Safe­ty Sys­tems 

Joby was the first elec­tric air taxi com­pa­ny to have a Safe­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tem accept­ed by the FAA’s Vol­un­tary Pro­gram for Air Oper­a­tions, sup­port­ing the Company’s Part 135 oper­a­tions. It was also the first eVTOL com­pa­ny to be award­ed the Inter­na­tion­al Stan­dard for Busi­ness Air­craft Oper­a­tions Stage 1 Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, admin­is­tered by the Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Avi­a­tion Coun­cil, fol­low­ing a safe­ty audit in 2023.

Bon­ny Simi, Pres­i­dent of Oper­a­tions at Joby, remarked, “We are lead­ing the indus­try in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing of our elec­tric air taxi as well as in the prepa­ra­tion for com­mer­cial ser­vice. Many of these items have been years in the mak­ing.”

Bon­ny Simi

Joby intends to oper­ate its air­craft in the U.S. mar­kets includ­ing New York City and Los Ange­les along­side part­ner Delta Air Lines, and in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, where the Com­pa­ny has a six-year exclu­sive agree­ment to pro­vide air taxi ser­vices in Dubai. Joby will also part­ner with local oper­a­tors in cer­tain over­seas geo­gra­phies, as well as sup­port­ing direct sales of its air­craft to busi­ness cus­tomers such as Muka­malah, the avi­a­tion arm of Sau­di Aram­co, and to poten­tial gov­ern­ment part­ners such as the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense.

Today’s pre­sen­ta­tion will be avail­able via the Upcom­ing Events sec­tion of the Company’s investor web­site. A replay of the event will be avail­able online for a lim­it­ed time.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.jobyaviation.com

(Top image: Joby’s pro­pri­etary Ele­va­teOS air taxi soft­ware sys­tem includes (from l to r) an oper­a­tions core, pilot app and con­sumer-friend­ly rid­er app, all of which have been FAA-autho­rised for use by Joby’s Part 135 organ­i­sa­tion — Cred­it: Joby Avi­a­tion)

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