Commentary by Aeroclass.org: The current and potential regulation challenges of eVTOL aircraft

The abil­i­ty of an eVTOL air­craft to take off and land ver­ti­cal­ly sets it apart from oth­er cat­e­gories. An eVTOL air­craft does not neces­si­tate the same stan­dard of air­port infra­struc­ture as a fixed-wing air­craft.

Reduced air­port infra­struc­ture require­ments, such as run­ways, taxi­ways, and approach equip­ment, will even­tu­al­ly reduce the space avail­able for eVTOL air­craft at air­ports or oper­at­ing bases. This char­ac­ter­is­tic opens the door to a pletho­ra of oppor­tu­ni­ties, a few of which are dis­cussed below.

Urban Taxi

It is a com­po­nent of urban air mobil­i­ty that will pro­vide taxi ser­vices to com­muters in large cities or met­ro­pol­i­tan areas such as Tokyo, Shang­hai, New York, Istan­bul, and Lon­don, among oth­ers. Aside from air taxi, anoth­er prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion for such air­craft is air ambu­lance. 

Car­go Deliv­ery 

These air­craft can be used for car­go deliv­ery by e‑commerce stores, as well as food, gro­cery, and phar­ma­cy deliv­ery. 

Remote Trans­porta­tion 

Deliv­er­ing goods in a remote hilly area or a desert would be no more dif­fi­cult or expen­sive than using a fixed-wing air­plane or a heli­copter. An eVTOL will also be a valu­able asset in mil­i­tary oper­a­tions.

Cur­rent and Poten­tial Reg­u­la­tion Chal­lenges 

When­ev­er a new ser­vice or prod­uct is pre­sent­ed or launched in a mar­ket, man­u­fac­tur­ers and investors may receive mixed reac­tions from the gen­er­al pub­lic. Urban Air Mobil­i­ty is in the ear­ly stages of intro­duc­ing a new mode of trans­porta­tion to the mar­ket. Every new tech­nol­o­gy or oper­a­tion requires patience to become estab­lished in soci­ety.

The alti­tude of con­trolled air­space will be reduced to as low as 100 feet for the uti­liza­tion of eVTOL air­craft in com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. Such lim­it­ed con­trolled air­space will end up mak­ing sky­scraper con­struc­tion and sev­er­al oth­er mod­i­fi­ca­tions to urban infra­struc­ture plan­ning.

Res­i­dents will be afraid of being hurt in an acci­dent if such a trans­porta­tion sys­tem is imple­ment­ed. As a result, gov­ern­ments, like metro sys­tems, will need to devel­op ded­i­cat­ed pas­sage for com­mer­cial eVTOL air­craft.

Fur­ther­more, because the eVTOL air­craft will be fly­ing along a ded­i­cat­ed path, it will neces­si­tate the use of oper­at­ing bases and sta­tions for main­te­nance, charg­ing, load­ing, and offload­ing pas­sen­gers and car­go. Build­ing such infra­struc­ture will nec­es­sar­i­ly require sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing, painstak­ing reg­u­la­tions as well as sub­stan­tial mod­i­fi­ca­tions in city plan­ning.

Gov­ern­ments and reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies are cur­rent­ly focus­ing on safe­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for new­ly man­u­fac­tured eVTOL mod­els. Cre­at­ing a safe oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment for the nov­el type of air­craft’s com­mer­cial use remains a chal­lenge.

Oper­a­tions and Pub­lic Accep­tance

The issue of pub­lic accep­tance is a major con­cern for reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and gov­ern­ments. Archi­tects, engi­neers, plan­ners, and safe­ty pro­fes­sion­als may be able to cre­ate a safe, pro­duc­tive, and cost-effec­tive urban mobil­i­ty solu­tion. The gen­er­al pub­lic, on the oth­er hand, could be reluc­tant to accept a new set of rules and reg­u­la­tions in their dai­ly lives.

Oper­at­ing an air­craft for per­son­al use is sub­ject to few­er restric­tions than oper­at­ing a com­mer­cial trans­porta­tion busi­ness. This is due to the high lev­el of risk in com­mer­cial oper­a­tions, where large sums of mon­ey and souls are at stake. As a result, gov­ern­ments must take action by defin­ing reg­u­la­tions and oper­a­tional spec­i­fi­ca­tions for risk man­age­ment and, even­tu­al­ly, reduc­ing the impact of human fac­tors on com­mer­cial ser­vices.

Cur­rent Cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and Reg­u­la­tions 

The entire pro­gram will require three stages of reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for the suc­cess­ful appli­ca­tion of eVTOL air­craft for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. The first is a type cer­tifi­cate, which can be obtained by demon­strat­ing the air­craft’s safe and effec­tive per­for­mance.

The fol­low­ing step for a man­u­fac­tur­er is to obtain a pro­duc­tion cer­tifi­cate by demon­strat­ing to author­i­ties that effi­cient and pre­cise mass pro­duc­tion of a pro­to­type type-cer­ti­fied mod­el is fea­si­ble. The oper­a­tor cer­tifi­cate, which can be acquired by demon­strat­ing reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions, is the third cer­tifi­cate required.

The FAA and EASA, the world’s largest and most influ­en­tial reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies, are cur­rent­ly work­ing on reg­u­la­tions for com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions.

FAA

The FAA is cur­rent­ly work­ing to mod­i­fy exist­ing avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tions to adjust this new tech­nol­o­gy. The first step in obtain­ing a type cer­tifi­cate for an eVTOL is to have the air­craft and its com­po­nents air­wor­thy accord­ing to the type design.

The FAA uses one of two exist­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process­es in 14 CFR Part 21.17(a) and (b) to address eVTOL type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Fol­low­ing the issuance of a type cer­tifi­cate, eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­ers must pro­cure a pro­duc­tion cer­tifi­cate, which neces­si­tates a man­u­fac­tur­er to demon­strate its abil­i­ty to pro­duce the air­craft to the same stan­dards.

Organ­i­sa­tions that want to use eVTOLs for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es must also obtain an Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate from the FAA under 14 CFR Part 135, which includes addi­tion­al safe­ty, main­te­nance, per­for­mance, and oper­a­tional require­ments. To start oper­at­ing com­mer­cial­ly, eVTOL oper­a­tors must also obtain finan­cial author­i­ty from the DOT and will be sus­cep­ti­ble to asso­ci­at­ed US own­er­ship and con­trol require­ments.

EASA

Unlike the FAA, which relied on cur­rent reg­u­la­tions, EASA is devel­op­ing draft reg­u­la­tions and a new eVTOL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion frame­work through a series of key build­ing blocks. The first pil­lar of EASA’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy was its pro­posed spe­cial con­di­tion for Small-Cat­e­go­ry VTOL Air­craft in July 2019. In May 2020, EASA pub­lished its first set of SVTOL com­pli­ance mea­sures.

The EASA pub­lished phase two of the SVTOL in May 2021, and phase three is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of this year or ear­ly next year. EASA, like the FAA, pri­ori­tis­es safe­ty above all else. EASA neces­si­tates com­pa­nies pro­duc­ing type-cer­ti­fied prod­ucts to obtain Pro­duc­tion Organ­i­sa­tion Approval.

eVTOL oper­a­tors are required to obtain an Air Oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate, which details EASA’s tech­ni­cal require­ments and admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures for air­line cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Cur­rent EASA AOC require­ments, on the oth­er hand, are tai­lored to exist­ing types of air­craft and eVTOLs.

Future Reg­u­la­tions

The eVTOL air­craft is antic­i­pat­ed to be a less expen­sive, less noisy, and more con­ve­nient sub­sti­tute to heli­copters. Hun­dreds of start-ups and estab­lished busi­ness­es are devel­op­ing solu­tions for the most effi­cient use of these machines. How­ev­er, the absence of reg­u­la­tions sti­fles the growth of such man­u­fac­tur­ers and ser­vice providers. Sev­er­al com­pa­nies are aim­ing to launch ser­vices and prod­ucts by 2024, despite sig­nif­i­cant risk of reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges.

This year, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) host­ed a num­ber of online sem­i­nars, bring­ing togeth­er busi­ness­es and leg­is­la­tors to share infor­ma­tion and advance the safe tran­si­tion to this new tech­nol­o­gy. Cur­rent­ly, the most sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­ers to the suc­cess­ful launch of com­mer­cial eVTOL ser­vices are dis­cussed below.

Infra­struc­ture

The most advanced and effi­cient vehi­cles are pret­ty worth­less unless they have a sat­is­fac­to­ry infra­struc­ture that includes a place to land, loading/unloading, and take-off. Path­ways (routes) inte­grat­ed with emer­gency and res­cue facil­i­ties would also be com­po­nent of a more sophis­ti­cat­ed infra­struc­ture.

Reg­u­la­tions

Even though eVTOL air­craft are intend­ed to replace heli­copters, sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in design and con­struc­tion, pow­er­plants, and appli­ca­tion make it dif­fi­cult for gov­ern­ments and reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies to pre­cise­ly incor­po­rate those in exist­ing reg­u­la­tions. There are cur­rent­ly no FAA-cer­ti­fied eVTOL air­craft mod­els. Man­u­fac­tur­ers and oper­a­tors are col­lab­o­rat­ing close­ly with reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties and safe­ty boards to expe­dite the reg­u­la­to­ry action process.

Tech­nol­o­gy

To incor­po­rate new tech­nolo­gies and dig­i­tal appli­ca­tions in the new urban air mobil­i­ty sys­tem, a nov­el set of rules will be expect­ed. To save time and mon­ey on pilot train­ing and to con­quer the pilot short­age issue, urban air mobil­i­ty is focus­ing on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence rather than flight crew. How­ev­er, oper­a­tions for unmanned air­craft sys­tems will undoubt­ed­ly neces­si­tate the cre­ation of a new set of reg­u­la­tions for man­u­fac­tur­ers, tech­ni­cians, and oper­a­tors.

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By Aeroclass.org

AeroClass.org is an e‑learning plat­form ded­i­cat­ed to avi­a­tion new­com­ers, aero­space pro­fes­sion­als and busi­ness­es with­in the sec­tor who are open to effec­tive trans­for­ma­tion of their per­son­nel onboard­ing and pro­fes­sion­al train­ing prac­tices for their employ­ees.

The com­mon goal of rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing both the e‑learning indus­try and avi­a­tion tech sec­tor is the main motive which brought togeth­er our team of experts in dif­fer­ent areas of the avi­a­tion indus­try and beyond.