Joby Aviation Completes Final International Flight Demo of 2025 in Japan, Rounding Off Impressive Year of Flight Activity

Joby Avi­a­tion flew its eVTOL air­craft at the Fuji Speed­way in Japan, as the week-long cam­paign con­clud­ed the com­pa­ny’s final inter­na­tion­al flight demon­stra­tion of 2025.

Con­duct­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Toy­ota Motor Com­pa­ny, this recent cam­paign in Japan includ­ed 14 pilot­ed flights and marks a suc­cess­ful end to a year, defined by more than 850 flights across Joby’s elec­tric air taxi fleet which has now flown more than 50,000 miles.

Joby added that this 2.6x increase in oper­a­tional tem­po over the pre­vi­ous year has been cru­cial to val­i­dat­ing the air­craft design and man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es required to achieve Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) and lay the foun­da­tion for Joby’s goal of car­ry­ing its first pas­sen­gers in 2026.

James “Bud­dy” Den­ham, Chief Test Pilot at Joby, said: “2025 saw the most exten­sive and rig­or­ous flight test­ing in our his­to­ry. Fly­ing in active, con­trolled air­space in three coun­tries this year — from the Cal­i­for­nia coast­line to the icon­ic Fuji Speed­way and the deserts of Dubai — has been a pow­er­ful show­case of Joby’s oper­a­tional matu­ri­ty.”

Glob­al Oper­a­tional Mile­stones

The Fuji flights are the cap­stone of a year of full-tran­si­tion, pilot­ed flights that spanned key glob­al mar­kets and demon­strat­ed Joby’s depth of oper­a­tional matu­ri­ty:

• USA, UAE, Japan: Joby’s air­craft flew in three coun­tries, includ­ing 41 flights at the World Expo 2025 in Osa­ka, Japan, and 21 flights in the UAE as part of an envi­ron­men­tal and oper­a­tions test cam­paign this sum­mer. Joby was also the only elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft to fly in the week­long Dubai Air­show this year
• Flights Between Pub­lic Air­ports: Joby com­plet­ed sev­er­al point-to-point flights this year in prepa­ra­tion for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. The first was between Mari­na (OAR) and Mon­terey (MRY), two pub­lic air­ports with active com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. The sec­ond took place between Mari­na and Sali­nas (SNS) as part of Joby’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cal­i­for­nia Inter­na­tion­al Air­show. Joby then com­plet­ed the first pilot­ed point-to-point air taxi flight in the UAE, from its test facil­i­ty in Margham to Al Mak­toum Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (DWC) in the lead up to the Dubai Air­show.
• Future Tech­nol­o­gy Demos: Joby suc­cess­ful­ly flew its tur­bine-elec­tric demon­stra­tor air­craft three months after the con­cept was announced, show­cas­ing the speed of dual-use devel­op­ment. Joby’s Super­pi­lot™ autonomous flight tech­nol­o­gy also logged more than 7,000 miles of flight in a major US defense exer­cise over the Pacif­ic Ocean.

Real-World Per­for­mance Data

Joby’s elec­tric air taxi flights cov­ered more than 9,000 miles in 2025 and sup­port­ed the com­ple­tion of more than 4,900 test points. The flight data and insights accu­mu­lat­ed this year are direct­ly sup­port­ing the final stages of Joby’s FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts, includ­ing the com­pli­ance data need­ed to begin Type Inspec­tion Autho­riza­tion (TIA) flight test­ing in 2026.

As well as val­i­dat­ing per­for­mance and readi­ness of air­craft deploy­ment, this work sup­port­ed the final­iza­tion of oper­at­ing and main­te­nance man­u­als in prepa­ra­tion for TIA. Joby’s flight test strat­e­gy has shown that its air­craft is already per­form­ing with­in FAA air­wor­thi­ness stan­dards as the com­pa­ny moves into the final stage of com­mer­cial reg­u­la­to­ry approval.

In addi­tion, Blade Urban Air Mobility’s oper­a­tional mile­stone at this year’s Ryder Cup in New York advanced Joby’s mis­sion by pro­vid­ing invalu­able data and expe­ri­ence for scal­ing high-tem­po pas­sen­ger logis­tics ahead of launch­ing its elec­tric air taxi ser­vice. D

Dur­ing the four-day event, Blade trans­port­ed over 2,500 peo­ple from the New York metro area to the Ryder Cup in one of the largest mul­ti-day civil­ian heli­copter move­ments in U.S. his­to­ry.