eVTOL aircraft OEMs set up NBAA Advanced Air Mobility roundtable to integrate technologies into US airspace

The Nation­al Busi­ness Avi­a­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NBAA) has formed a new Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty round­table, with found­ing mem­bers includ­ing eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers Eve Air Mobil­i­ty, Joby Avi­a­tion, Lil­i­um and Wisk.

It will act as a forum for high-lev­el pol­i­cy plan­ning with sec­tor lead­ers, to chart a course for the inte­gra­tion of AAM tech­nolo­gies into US air­space and infra­struc­ture. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, the round­table will also pro­vide a voice for OEMs devel­op­ing eVTOL air­craft vehi­cles and oth­er sys­tems, with regard to air­port access, air­space man­age­ment, local com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and oth­er crit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties. Oth­er found­ing mem­bers include Hyundai UAM and Hill­wood Avi­a­tion.

NBAA Pres­i­dent and CEO Ed Bolen, said: “On-demand air mobil­i­ty offers tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties, espe­cial­ly for busi­ness avi­a­tion. We are unique­ly suit­ed to offer exper­tise in tack­ling the con­sid­er­a­tions asso­ci­at­ed with AAM inte­gra­tion, and we are pleased to part­ner with this group of AAM lead­ers in mov­ing this tech­nol­o­gy for­ward.”

The NBAA is the lead­ing organ­i­sa­tion for com­pa­nies which rely on gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­craft to make their busi­ness­es more effi­cient, pro­duc­tive and suc­cess­ful. The asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sents more than 11,000 com­pa­ny and pro­fes­sion­al mem­bers and pro­vides more than 100 prod­ucts and ser­vices to the busi­ness avi­a­tion com­mu­ni­ty.

Each of the found­ing mem­bers of the AAM Round­table bring sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence to the table. Joby Avi­a­tion is work­ing towards launch­ing its first pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing ser­vices by 2024. It went pub­lic in a joint SPAC merg­er with Rein­vent Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ners — which was co-estab­lished by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoff­mann.

Sim­i­lar to Joby, Lil­i­um also went pub­lic in a joint SPAC merg­er in March 2021 with Qell Acqui­si­tion Corp. The Ger­man start­up also used the announce­ment to reveal its sev­en-seater Lil­i­um Jet, which will be the first of its air­craft to go into ser­i­al pro­duc­tion.

Eve Urban Air Mobil­i­ty was launched back in Octo­ber as a new inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny from Embrar­erX, and is already hard at work in the indus­try.

It is lead­ing a con­sor­tium with the UK’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, where the project will exam­ine how eVTOL air­craft may oper­ate in trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers and car­go over urban and region­al areas. This includes explor­ing jour­neys from Lon­don City Air­port (LCY) to Heathrow Air­port (LHR), with stops in between.

Wisk is cur­rent­ly the only eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er work­ing on an autonomous mod­el, and has already com­plet­ed more than 1,500 test flights. Ear­li­er this week, it announced a part­ner­ship with Blade Urban Air Mobil­i­ty to pro­vide up to 30 air­craft for short-dis­tance routes between Blade’s ter­mi­nals in the USA.

The inau­gur­al meet­ing of the AAM Round­table took place in Feb­ru­ary 2021, with addi­tion­al meet­ings planned through­out the year.

Com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the AAM Round­table should con­tact NBAA’s Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Gov­ern­ment Affairs, Christa Lucas at clucas@nbaa.org.