Joby Begins Florida eVTOL Flight Campaign Under US Integration Pilot Programme

Joby Avi­a­tion has begun a week-long series of pilot­ed elec­tric air taxi flights in Flori­da, work­ing with the Flori­da Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (FDOT) as part of the US Depart­ment of Transportation’s eVTOL Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (eIPP).

The cam­paign will take the company’s air­craft between loca­tions in Tam­pa Bay, Orlan­do and Florida’s Space Coast. The flights are intend­ed to help assess how elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft could oper­ate with­in exist­ing air­port envi­ron­ments and sup­port plan­ning for a pro­posed statewide inter­ci­ty air taxi net­work.

The pro­gramme opened with a flight across Tam­pa Bay between Albert Whit­ted Air­port in down­town St Peters­burg and Tam­pa Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. The route retraces the jour­ney of the world’s first sched­uled com­mer­cial air­line ser­vice, flown between St Peters­burg and Tam­pa on 1 Jan­u­ary 1914.

In Orlan­do, Joby plans to oper­ate at Orlan­do Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, land­ing near Ter­mi­nal C and the airport’s train sta­tion at a new ver­ti­port. The com­pa­ny said the routes and pro­ce­dures for these oper­a­tions were devel­oped through two years of sim­u­la­tion work involv­ing the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA), NASA, the Greater Orlan­do Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and local air traf­fic con­trollers.

The cam­paign will also include a flight at the Shut­tle Land­ing Facil­i­ty at Kennedy Space Cen­ter, sched­uled to coin­cide with the UP.Summit avi­a­tion indus­try event.

Florida’s project is one of eight select­ed nation­al­ly for the eIPP, a gov­ern­ment-indus­try ini­tia­tive intend­ed to gath­er oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence and sup­port the safe inte­gra­tion of eVTOL air­craft into US air­space. Accord­ing to FDOT, its pro­gramme will be devel­oped in three phas­es cov­er­ing pas­sen­ger trans­port, car­go deliv­ery, automa­tion and med­ical response.

The state has been devel­op­ing its advanced air mobil­i­ty plans since 2021. In April 2026, Flori­da leg­is­la­tion autho­rised FDOT to fund ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture statewide. The state is also devel­op­ing Sun­Trax Air, an advanced air mobil­i­ty test cam­pus near Inter­state 4, where test­ing is planned to begin by the end of 2026.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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