ASKA A5 prototype earns FAA Special Airworthiness Certification

ASKA claims its A5 is the world’s first fly­ing car to start the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process with the FAA. The Sil­i­con Val­ley air mobil­i­ty com­pa­ny’s pro­to­type was award­ed Cer­tifi­cate of Autho­riza­tion (COA) and Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the FAA and has start­ed flight test­ing.

Since 2022 ASKA has per­formed suc­cess­ful ground test­ing and in Q1/2023 began con­duct­ing on-street dri­ving tests. This Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cate sig­nals that ASKA A5 has suc­cess­ful­ly met all FAA safe­ty require­ments, in com­pli­ance with applic­a­ble air­wor­thi­ness, noise, fuel vent­ing, and exhaust emis­sions stan­dards.

CEO and co-founder Guy Kaplin­sky com­ment­ed: “The data we are har­vest­ing from flight test­ing is enabling us to make progress towards our type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. We already com­plet­ed the ini­tial phase and are pro­gress­ing towards our next mile­stone, G1 sta­tus.”

G‑1 is a crit­i­cal mile­stone in the FAA cross-val­i­da­tion process, estab­lish­ing air­wor­thi­ness and envi­ron­men­tal require­ments nec­es­sary to achieve FAA Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Val­i­da­tion. The size of an SUV, the four-seater ASKA A5 has dual hybrid ener­gy sup­ply with bat­ter­ies and a range exten­der engine that charges the bat­ter­ies in-flight and uses pre­mi­um gaso­line.

Large Aero­dy­nam­ic wings are opti­mised for safe land­ing with abil­i­ty to glide using six inde­pen­dent motor sys­tems for flight and suf­fi­cient reserve flight time to meet FAA safe­ty require­ments. Equipped with a bal­lis­tic para­chute, it has a flight range 250 miles and air speed up to 150 mph.

Maki Kaplin­sky, co-founder, chair & COO, explained: “One of the sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages of a road­wor­thy eVTOL, like the ASKA A5, is that it does not require the mod­i­fi­ca­tion or elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of exist­ing air­ports since it can max­i­mize the use of today’s infra­struc­ture, such as the many charg­ing sta­tions locat­ed around us.

“We are work­ing with local air­ports in the Bay Area to test and con­firm our con­cept of oper­a­tions — they open the gate, ASKA A5 dri­ves in as a car, drives/taxis to the heli­pad or run­way, trans­forms into the flight mode and can take off.”

ASKA A5 can enter an air­field by dri­ving through the air­port gate, open­ing the wings, taxi­ing towards a heli­pad or run­way, then take off. It can also per­form a short take­off from the run­way using the in-wheel motors and thrust from the props.