EASA publishes world’s first rules for operation of air taxis in cities

The Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) has pub­lished rules for the oper­a­tion of air taxis in cities, the first com­pre­hen­sive pro­pos­al for such reg­u­la­tions to be issued world-wide.

The pro­posed new reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work is open to pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion until 30 Sep­tem­ber 2022, and cov­ers the tech­ni­cal domains of air­wor­thi­ness, air oper­a­tions, flight crew licens­ing and rules of the air.

They com­ple­ment exist­ing EU reg­u­la­to­ry mate­r­i­al for oper­a­tions of Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tems (UAS), the unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem known in Europe as U‑space and the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of VTOL-capa­ble air­craft, as well as EASA guid­ance on the design of ver­ti­ports.

EASA exec­u­tive direc­tor Patrick Ky said: “With these rules, EASA becomes the first avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tor world­wide to release a com­pre­hen­sive reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for oper­a­tions of VTOL-capa­ble air­craft which will offer air taxi and sim­i­lar ser­vices.

“The pub­li­ca­tion rein­forces the lead­er­ship EASA is show­ing in this area of inno­va­tion. At the same time, we have done our best to address gen­er­al soci­etal con­cerns and the expec­ta­tions of EU cit­i­zens with respect to safe­ty, secu­ri­ty, pri­va­cy, envi­ron­ment and noise.”

Man­u­fac­tur­ers in Europe have sig­nalled to EASA that they will be ready for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of VTOL air­craft in the next few years. These air­craft will enable new air mobil­i­ty con­cepts in the frame­work of the ‘smart, green and dig­i­tal’ cities ini­tia­tive led by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion.

EASA’s lat­est pro­pos­als will estab­lish a har­monised set of reg­u­la­tions and rules at EU lev­el for this new mobil­i­ty by air of peo­ple and car­go.

The over­all objec­tive is to fos­ter the devel­op­ment of a new ecosys­tem for urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM), to achieve the safe and secure inte­gra­tion of cer­ti­fied UAS and VTOL-capa­ble air­craft oper­a­tions in the EU, and to enable oper­a­tors to safe­ly oper­ate VTOL-capa­ble air­craft in the sin­gle Euro­pean sky.

In devel­op­ing its pro­pos­als for new rules for the dif­fer­ent types of air­craft designs and oper­a­tions, EASA applies a step-by-step approach that is close­ly aligned with actu­al indus­try devel­op­ment.

As such, cer­tain future devel­op­ments like VTOL-capa­ble air­craft with­out a human pilot on board are not yet cov­ered in this pro­pos­al, but they will be addressed by EASA with sep­a­rate pro­pos­als when need­ed, and in line with tech­no­log­i­cal progress.

Last week, the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) con­firmed it would put in place the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards used by EASA, known as Spe­cial Con­di­tions (SC)-VTOL, as the basis for UK accep­tance for eVTOL air­craft, after the US FAA stat­ed its own cer­ti­fi­ca­tion rules are to be mod­i­fied.

In March, EASA pub­lished the world’s first guid­ance for the design of ver­ti­ports and the ground infra­struc­ture need­ed for the safe oper­a­tion of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) ser­vices such as air taxis, in loca­tions across Europe, includ­ing urban areas.