Joby Aviation nears completion of Part 135 Air Carrier Certification with the FAA for its eVTOL aircraft

Joby Avi­a­tion has begun the fourth of five stages to receive its Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate from the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA).

A Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate is required for Joby to oper­ate its eVTOL air­craft as an air taxi ser­vice in cities and com­mu­ni­ties around the Unit­ed States. Along­side a Type Cer­tifi­cate and Pro­duc­tion Cer­tifi­cate, this is one of three reg­u­la­to­ry approvals crit­i­cal to the planned launch of Joby’s aer­i­al ride-shar­ing ser­vice in 2024.

After fil­ing an ini­tial appli­ca­tion for a Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate in June 2021, Joby com­plet­ed the sec­ond stage in August, which includes sub­mis­sion of a com­plete pack­age of man­u­als. The third and fourth stages involve FAA review and approval of man­u­als and FAA obser­va­tion of the Com­pa­ny per­form­ing oper­a­tions to ensure full reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance.

Bon­ny Simi, Head of Air Oper­a­tions and Peo­ple at Joby, said: “Our aspi­ra­tion is to not just build and cer­ti­fy a rev­o­lu­tion­ary air­craft, but to oper­ate a com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger ser­vice that saves peo­ple time with min­i­mal impact on the envi­ron­ment. Achiev­ing a Part 135 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion unlocks the abil­i­ty to do that, and we’re mov­ing through the process ahead of  sched­ule.”

Joby entered the fourth stage of the process last week, with FAA rep­re­sen­ta­tives begin­ning to observe the com­pa­ny’s ini­tial cadre of pilot instruc­tors as they demon­strate mas­tery of train­ing and oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures using the Company’s pre­pared man­u­als and train­ing pro­gramme.

The fifth phase is FAA final approval and issuance of the Part 135 cer­tifi­cate, which Joby expects to com­plete the Part 135 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process lat­er this year. 

Joby recent­ly announced a part­ner­ship with CAE to devel­op and qual­i­fy flight sim­u­la­tion train­ing devices that will be used to train com­mer­cial­ly-rat­ed pilots to fly the company’s eVTOL air­craft. 

Joby’s all-elec­tric air­craft is designed to trans­port a pilot and four pas­sen­gers with zero oper­a­tion emis­sions at speeds of up to 200 mph. It has a demon­strat­ed max­i­mum range of 150 miles on a sin­gle charge.