Joby Completes Piloted Electric Air Taxi Flight Across San Francisco Bay and Around Golden Gate Bridge

Joby Avi­a­tion has com­plet­ed a series of demon­stra­tion flights across the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, where it show­cased its oper­a­tional readi­ness and demon­strat­ed the future of qui­et, emis­sions-free flight is near­ing com­mer­cial readi­ness.

The flight marked the kick­off of Joby’s 2026 Elec­tric Skies Tour, a nation­al show­case timed to cel­e­brate the Unit­ed States’ 250th anniver­sary.

After depart­ing Oak­land Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, Joby’s (N545JX) air­craft, pilot­ed by Andrea Pin­gi­tore, soared qui­et­ly across the Bay toward the Gold­en Gate Bridge and turned above the Marin Head­lands, set against one of the world’s most rec­og­niz­able sky­lines.

Pop­u­la­tion growth and urban­iza­tion is stretch­ing ground trans­porta­tion to its lim­its, mak­ing the Bay Area a nat­ur­al ear­ly mar­ket for air taxis. San Fran­cis­co dri­vers lost an aver­age of 112 hours to traf­fic in 2025, rank­ing it the third most con­gest­ed city in the nation.

Joby’s goal is to reclaim these hours by turn­ing long com­mutes into seam­less, min­utes-long jour­neys. Backed by strate­gic part­ner­ships with Uber and Delta Air Lines, the com­pa­ny is build­ing an inte­grat­ed ecosys­tem to stream­line every leg of the trip.

 JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, said: “The Bay Area is home to the world’s most inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies, includ­ing Joby, but it’s also an area with sig­nif­i­cant traf­fic and unique geo­graph­i­cal bar­ri­ers.

“Our tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build on the immense poten­tial of this region while pro­tect­ing it for the next gen­er­a­tion. By pro­vid­ing clean, qui­et ser­vice with min­i­mal infra­struc­ture invest­ment we are mak­ing flight an every­day real­i­ty for the com­mu­ni­ty.”

The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to make progress towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, marked by the suc­cess­ful flight of its first FAA-con­form­ing air­craft for TIA, which paves the way for FAA pilots to car­ry out ‘for cred­it’ tests lat­er this year. The air­craft is designed with safe­ty, acoustics and per­for­mance in mind — all crit­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics to unlock­ing the urban aer­i­al rideshar­ing mar­ket.

Joby expects to fly and present its air­craft in cities across the coun­try as part of the tour, with more infor­ma­tion expect­ed to be revealed soon.

The com­pa­ny has already logged more than 50,000 miles across its fleet, as it scales its pres­ence across the USA. It was select­ed as a part­ner in mul­ti­ple win­ning appli­ca­tions under the White House-backed eVTOL Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (eIPP), giv­ing the com­pa­ny the oppor­tu­ni­ty to begin ear­ly oper­a­tions across 10 states: Ari­zona, Flori­da, Ida­ho, New Jer­sey, New York, North Car­oli­na, Okla­homa, Ore­gon, Texas, and Utah.

To meet demand, Joby is rapid­ly scal­ing its man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print. This growth is sup­port­ed by a new­ly acquired 700,000-square-foot facil­i­ty in Day­ton, Ohio, which along­side Joby’s expand­ed pro­duc­tion site in Mari­na, Cal­i­for­nia and spe­cial­ized pow­er­train facil­i­ty in San Car­los, Cal­i­for­nia, is designed to sup­port Joby’s plans to increase its pro­duc­tion rate to up to four air­craft per month in 2027.

Over time, Joby’s Day­ton facil­i­ties are expect­ed to be capa­ble of sup­port­ing the deliv­ery of up to 500 air­craft per year.