America: 28 Congress Members Call For U.S. Integration of AAM into National Airspace

Last week, U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jim­my Panet­ta and Jay Ober­nolte, co-chairs of the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) cau­cus, along with 26 Mem­bers of Con­gress, wrote to Pete Buttigieg, the Dept. of Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary, to encour­age the inte­gra­tion of AAM into U.S Nation­al Air­space, in order to con­tin­ue the country’s avi­a­tion lead­er­ship, reports a press release.  

eVTOLs or fly­ing taxis are expect­ed to be FAA cer­ti­fied with­in the next few years. This will “sub­stan­tial­ly upgrade and improve trans­porta­tion, while cre­at­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of high-skilled jobs,” says the let­ter.

The mem­bers urge the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to make progress on the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tions of AAM air­craft, pub­lish­ing the Spe­cial Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Reg­u­la­tion (SFAR) and any sub­se­quent rule-mak­ings on time, max­imis­ing the use of exist­ing infra­struc­ture to accom­mo­date ini­tial oper­a­tions, export­ing the FAA’s approach glob­al­ly, allo­cat­ing nec­es­sary staff and resources to bring this indus­try to fruition, and the expe­di­tious estab­lish­ment of the AAM inter­a­gency work­ing group.

Joby Avi­a­tion

The mem­bers wrote, “We are at a piv­otal time in avi­a­tion.  In just a few short years, elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) and oth­er forms of emerg­ing avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies will be oper­at­ing in our Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem (NAS), chang­ing the way in which goods and peo­ple move with­in rur­al and urban areas.”

It con­tin­ues, “Over the past decade, indus­try and the U.S. gov­ern­ment have worked togeth­er to cer­ti­fy AAM air­craft and put in place the nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment to sup­port their entrance into the [Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem]. How­ev­er, that lead­er­ship is by no means guar­an­teed in the long run, and the U.S. is not alone pur­su­ing this endeav­our.”

Adding, “The world is cur­rent­ly in the mid­dle of a glob­al race for lead­er­ship in AAM, with indus­try and gov­ern­ments in Asia and Europe heav­i­ly invest­ing to aggres­sive­ly com­pete with the U.S. for the glob­al AAM mar­ket.  It is imper­a­tive that we do not rest on past achieve­ments or take our lead­er­ship posi­tion for grant­ed.”

The U.S cer­tain­ly has a num­ber of eVTOL com­pa­nies lead­ing this impend­ing green avi­a­tion includ­ing Joby and Archer. Both com­pa­nies aim to begin com­mer­cial flights in 2025. Oth­ers include Jaunt, Wisk and Beta Tech­nolo­gies.

Archer ‘Mid­night’

It is esti­mat­ed AAM could add close to USD1 tril­lion dol­lars and 400,000 jobs to the economies around the world who invest in this new indus­try.  Reps. Panet­ta and Ober­nolte launched the bipar­ti­san Con­gres­sion­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Cau­cus in 2022 to edu­cate mem­bers and the pub­lic about AAM tech­nolo­gies, asso­ci­at­ed soci­etal ben­e­fits, and reg­u­la­to­ry updates need­ed to pro­mote this rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nol­o­gy.

Mem­bers join­ing Reps. Panet­ta and Ober­nolte include:-

Col­in Z. Allred (TX-32), Julia Brown­ley (CA-26), Cliff Bentz (OR-02), Salud Car­ba­jal (CA-24), Sheila Cher­filus-McCormick (FL-20), Eric A. “Rick” Craw­ford (AR-01), Dan Cren­shaw (TX-02), Sharice L. Davids (KS-03), Byron Don­alds (FL-19), Neal P. Dunn, M.D. (FL-02), Jake Ellzey (TX-06), Bill Fos­ter (IL-11), C. Scott Franklin (FL-18), Zoe Lof­gren (CA-18), Tracey Mann (KS-01), Troy E. Nehls (TX-22), Don­ald M. Payne, Jr. (NJ-10), Mikie Sher­rill (NJ-11), Greg Stan­ton (AZ-04), Dina Titus (NV-01), Michael R. Turn­er (OH-10), David G. Val­adao (CA-22), Jef­fer­son Van Drew (NJ-02), Daniel Web­ster (FL-11), Bruce West­er­man (AR-04), and Fred­er­i­ca S. Wil­son (FL-24).

Read the full let­ter here:-

https://panetta.house.gov/sites/panetta.house.gov/files/documents/2023.02.23_DOT_AAM%20Leadership%20Letter.pdf