EASA issues “no technical objection” to PAL‑V’s FlyDrive Vehicle certification roadmap, “Clears Essential Milestone”

The Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA), has issued a ‘No Tech­ni­cal Objec­tion’ to PAL‑V, the Dutch com­pa­ny devel­op­ing and com­mer­cial­is­ing the world’s lead­ing Fly­Drive vehi­cle, reports a press release. The Fly­Drive first began devel­op­ment in 2008. 

While the vehi­cle dri­ves on the road, it can quick­ly con­vert into an air­craft, offer­ing safe and unique door-to-door, long dis­tance mobil­i­ty. 

Volk­er Arns­meier, EASA’s Senior Project Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Man­ag­er for VTOL, com­ment­ed, “This is the first time ever we have issued a No Tech­ni­cal Objec­tion (NTO) for a Fly­Drive vehi­cle in the Air Mobil­i­ty sec­tor. This is a major step towards cer­ti­fy­ing the PAL‑V Lib­er­ty.”

While the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for road use was achieved in 2020, the “‘No Tech­ni­cal Objec­tion’ is EASA’s endorse­ment of PAL‑V’s detailed com­pli­ance demon­stra­tion pro­gram to finalise flight accep­tance,” explains the release. “It sub­stan­ti­ates there are no known risks pre­vent­ing full type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Robert Dinge­manse, Founder & CEO of PAL‑V, remarked, “This mile­stone con­firms that PAL‑V is ready to bring the world’s first cer­ti­fied Fly­Drive vehi­cles to mar­ket, trans­form­ing mobil­i­ty for­ev­er.” 

The release con­tin­ues, “PAL‑V is now the first com­pa­ny in its sec­tor to reach the last of sev­en EASA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion phas­es. The agency is known to adhere to the strictest lev­els of safe­ty require­ments which pro­vides PAL‑V a path to glob­al adop­tion once cer­ti­fied in Europe.”

Apart from its ‘door-to-door’ abil­i­ty, the vehi­cles dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves with the longest range being 500km. The com­pa­ny points out, “While oth­er com­pa­nies have attempt­ed to devel­op Fly­Drive con­cepts, none have achieved a cred­i­ble path to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The NTO proves this.”

With a grow­ing order book from both gov­ern­ment and pro­fes­sion­al mar­kets as well as pri­vate buy­ers, PAL‑V is lay­ing the ground­work for glob­al expan­sion, includ­ing new pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties and inter­na­tion­al sup­port net­works. 

EASA’s deci­sion opens the way for full-scale pro­duc­tion and get­ting its order book con­vert­ed into deliv­er­ies. The com­pa­ny is con­cur­rent­ly plan­ning var­i­ous cus­tomi­sa­tions, includ­ing sus­tain­able fuels and oth­er CO2 neu­tral dri­ve trains.

Robert Dinge­manse

Dinge­manse con­clud­ed, “Bring­ing our vehi­cles to mar­ket as quick­ly as pos­si­ble has always been our goal, although, when it comes to safe­ty, there are no short­cuts.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.pal‑v.com/en

(Images: PAL‑V)

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