Joby Aviation receives Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate and can begin on-demand air taxi operations

Joby Avi­a­tion has received a Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate from the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, allow­ing the com­pa­ny to begin on-demand com­mer­cial air taxi oper­a­tions.

Joby received the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ahead of sched­ule, with com­ple­tion of the process orig­i­nal­ly expect­ed in the sec­ond half of this year.

The five-stage process includ­ed the sub­mis­sion of more than 850 pages of man­u­als for approval and required Joby’s ini­tial cadre of pilots to demon­strate mas­tery of the company’s pro­ce­dures and train­ing under FAA obser­va­tion.

Bon­ny Simi, Head of Air Oper­a­tions and Peo­ple at Joby, and one of the Company’s FAA-approved pilots, stat­ed: “The pro­ce­dures we’ve pre­pared lay a foun­da­tion for our future eVTOL oper­a­tions. Over the com­ing months, we will use our Part 135 cer­tifi­cate to exer­cise the oper­a­tions and cus­tomer tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms that will under­pin our mul­ti-modal ride-shar­ing ser­vice, while also refin­ing our pro­ce­dures to ensure seam­less jour­neys for our cus­tomers.

“Receiv­ing this cer­tifi­cate ahead of sched­ule is a tes­ta­ment to the incred­i­ble ded­i­ca­tion and hard work of our team.”

The Part 135 Air Car­ri­er Cer­tifi­cate is one of three FAA approvals required for Joby to oper­ate its eVTOL air­craft as an air taxi ser­vice in cities and com­mu­ni­ties across the Unit­ed States, along­side a Type Cer­tifi­cate and a Pro­duc­tion Cer­tifi­cate.

Once Joby receives a type cer­tifi­cate for its eVTOL air­craft, the com­pa­ny will com­plete the FAA review process to add the new air­craft type to its exist­ing air car­ri­er cer­tifi­cate.

Pilots for the Company’s future aer­i­al ride-shar­ing ser­vice, expect­ed to launch in 2024, will have the ben­e­fit of fly­ing an envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly air­craft on a reli­able work sched­ule, end­ing each shift in their home city. 

Joby pre­vi­ous­ly announced a part­ner­ship with CAE, a glob­al leader in avi­a­tion train­ing, to devel­op and qual­i­fy flight sim­u­la­tion train­ing devices that Joby will use to train com­mer­cial­ly-rat­ed pilots to fly its eVTOL air­craft.

The com­pa­ny also recent­ly announced the results of acoustic test­ing with NASA, which con­firmed the air­craft hit its tar­get for low noise emis­sions dur­ing take-off and land­ing as well as over­head flight. 

Joby’s all-elec­tric air­craft is designed to trans­port a pilot and four pas­sen­gers up to 150 miles on a sin­gle charge at speeds of up to 200 mph.