Joby Aviation completes full transition from vertical to cruise flights in its electric air taxi, with a pilot onboard

Joby Avi­a­tion has reached a land­mark moment in its air­craft test pro­gram, suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing flights with a full tran­si­tion from ver­ti­cal to cruise flight, and back again, with a pilot onboard.

Tran­si­tion­ing from ver­ti­cal to hor­i­zon­tal flight is a key design attribute of the Joby air­craft, allow­ing it to take-off and land ver­ti­cal­ly like a heli­copter, while main­tain­ing the effi­cien­cy and speed of a con­ven­tion­al, fixed-wing air­craft in for­ward flight.

The first pilot-on-board tran­si­tion was flown by Joby Chief Test Pilot James “Bud­dy” Den­ham and took place at Joby’s flight test facil­i­ty in Mari­na, Cal­i­for­nia. The flight saw Den­ham exe­cute a ver­ti­cal take-off in the lat­est air­craft to roll off Joby’s Mari­na pro­duc­tion line (N544JX), before climb­ing out and accel­er­at­ing to ful­ly wing­borne flight and return­ing for a ver­ti­cal land­ing on the run­way.

Didi­er Papadopolous, Pres­i­dent of Air­craft OEM at Joby, said: “Achiev­ing this mile­stone is huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant for Joby. It not only demon­strates the high lev­el of con­fi­dence we have in the per­for­mance of the air­craft as we pre­pare for com­mer­cial ser­vice in Dubai, it also paves the way to start­ing TIA flight test­ing with FAA pilots onboard.

“We have tak­en a very method­i­cal approach to achiev­ing this long-planned mile­stone, with an immense amount of test­ing, both in the air and on the ground, help­ing form a sol­id foun­da­tion that allowed us to move from one his­toric flight to rou­tine pilot-on-board tran­si­tions almost overnight.”

Joby Avi­a­tion pur­pose­ful­ly set out to demon­strate remote­ly-pilot­ed tran­si­tion first, com­plet­ing the first tran­si­tion of a full-scale, pro­to­type air­craft in 2017.

The Com­pa­ny has since com­plet­ed more than 40,000 miles of test flights across mul­ti­ple air­craft, includ­ing hun­dreds of tran­si­tions from ver­ti­cal take-off to cruise flight as well as more than a hun­dred flights with a pilot onboard in hov­er and low-speed flight.

Since com­plet­ing a land­mark first full tran­si­tion flight with a pilot onboard on April 22, 2025, the Com­pa­ny has com­plet­ed mul­ti­ple tran­si­tion flights with three dif­fer­ent pilots at the con­trols, as Joby becomes the first com­pa­ny to rou­tine­ly per­form inhab­it­ed test­ing of an elec­tric air taxi from hov­er to wing­borne flight.

Com­ment­ing on the flight, Den­ham added: “I’m hon­ored to have played a role in this his­toric moment. Design­ing and fly­ing an air­craft that can seam­less­ly tran­si­tion between ver­ti­cal and cruise flight has long been con­sid­ered one of the most chal­leng­ing tech­no­log­i­cal feats in aero­space, but our team has devel­oped and built an air­craft that makes it feel like an every­day task. The air­craft flew exact­ly as expect­ed, with excel­lent han­dling qual­i­ties and low pilot work­load.”

In prepa­ra­tion for achiev­ing pilot-on-board tran­si­tion flight, Joby com­plet­ed thou­sands of tests in the Company’s Inte­grat­ed Test Lab, a ground-based facil­i­ty which repli­cates all of the major sys­tems of the air­craft, allow­ing the team to test propul­sion units, actu­a­tors, and oth­er air­craft hard­ware and soft­ware that is iden­ti­cal to the Company’s pro­to­type air­craft before tak­ing to the air.

Joby also com­plet­ed a series of flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base designed to con­firm the redun­dan­cy present through­out the aircraft’s design, with remote, ground-based pilots han­dling sim­u­lat­ed motor-out, bat­tery-out, and oth­er poten­tial in-flight events.

In all cas­es, the air­craft per­formed as expect­ed, enabling Joby pilots to con­tin­ue safe flight and a con­trolled, ver­ti­cal land­ing, even when rely­ing on just four of the aircraft’s six pro­pellers.

As well as com­plet­ing test­ing at its base in Cal­i­for­nia, Joby has also pre­vi­ous­ly com­plet­ed demon­stra­tion flights in New York City, Japan, and Korea. Joby cur­rent­ly has five air­craft in its flight test fleet, with two deliv­ered to Edwards Air Force Base for test­ing in con­junc­tion with the Company’s defense cus­tomers.

Joby’s all-elec­tric air taxi is designed to trans­port a pilot and up to four pas­sen­gers at speeds of up to 200 mph (321 km/h), offer­ing high-speed mobil­i­ty with a frac­tion of the noise pro­duced by heli­copters and zero oper­at­ing emis­sions. Joby remains on track to deliv­er an air­craft to Dubai in the mid­dle of 2025 to com­plete flight test­ing ahead of first pas­sen­ger flights in the region.