Former FAA acting administrator and aviation veteran Dan Elwell joins Joby Aviation’s Advisory Board

Joby Avi­a­tion has appoint­ed Dan Elwell, the for­mer deputy and act­ing admin­is­tra­tor of the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA), to its Advi­so­ry Board. Elwell joins as the com­pa­ny begins to merge with Rein­vent Tech­nol­o­gy Part­ners fol­low­ing its SPAC deal last month.

At the FAA, Elwell was respon­si­ble for the safe­ty and effi­cien­cy of the world’s sin­gle largest aero­space sys­tem and had over­sight of its multi­bil­lion-dol­lar NextGen air traf­fic con­trol mod­erni­sa­tion pro­gramme. He was also the FAA’s Assis­tant Admin­is­tra­tor for Pol­i­cy, Plan­ning and Envi­ron­ment.

In join­ing Joby’s Advi­so­ry Board, he brings sig­nif­i­cant insight in cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as it con­tin­ues on its planned roadmap to launch com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger flights as soon as 2024.

“We are incred­i­bly excit­ed to wel­come Dan to our Advi­so­ry Board at this excit­ing time for Joby Avi­a­tion,” said JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion.

“Dan brings a rare com­bi­na­tion of in-the-air, pub­lic pol­i­cy and cor­po­rate exper­tise, gained over decades of work­ing in both the gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor. His unique per­spec­tive, and the insight he can offer around air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and air­line oper­a­tions, will be invalu­able to Joby as we move towards intro­duc­ing our ser­vice in 2024.”

As well as work­ing at the FAA, Elwell pre­vi­ous­ly served as Senior Advi­sor on Avi­a­tion to the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion. His gov­ern­ment ser­vice fol­lowed a long and suc­cess­ful career as a mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial pilot, where he spend 16 years with Amer­i­can Air­lines and also served as its Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for Inter­na­tion­al and Gov­ern­ment Affairs.

He earned his pilot wings at Williams Air Force Base in Ari­zona after grad­u­at­ing from the U.S. Air Force Acad­e­my with a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence degree in Inter­na­tion­al Affairs.  While in the mil­i­tary, Elwell logged more than 6,000 hours of com­bined civil­ian and mil­i­tary flight time in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Air Force Reserve, includ­ing com­bat ser­vice dur­ing Oper­a­tion Desert Storm. He cur­rent­ly serves on sev­er­al pri­vate and pub­lic boards, includ­ing Alas­ka Air Group.

Com­ment­ing on his appoint­ment, Elwell added: “JoeBen’s vision of sav­ing a bil­lion peo­ple an hour a day is going to change how we look at air trav­el. I’m excit­ed to join such a ded­i­cat­ed and pas­sion­ate team of avi­a­tors.”