Joby’s First Conforming Aircraft Heads to Final Assembly ahead of Type Inspection Authorisation (TIA) Flight Testing

Joby Avi­a­tion has announced it is prepar­ing for final assem­bly of its first con­form­ing air­craft intend­ed for Type Inspec­tion Autho­ri­sa­tion (TIA) flight tests.

TIA flight test­ing of a con­form­ing air­craft is a con­ver­gence of three crit­i­cal ini­tia­tives with­in Joby that are aligned with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) stan­dards:

1) rel­e­vant test plan approvals

2) a design that meets FAA stan­dards

3) the abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture the con­form­ing design

Hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly pro­gressed all three ahead of assem­bly, includ­ing FAA accep­tance of more than half of the Company’s test plans, this mile­stone con­tin­ues to move Joby into the final stage of FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and clos­er to com­mer­cial­iz­ing its elec­tric air taxi. 

Didi­er Papadopou­los, Pres­i­dent of Air­craft OEM, said: “Every com­po­nent, every sys­tem, and every test we have com­plet­ed over the past 15 years has led us to this point.

“We are now bring­ing it all togeth­er on the first of sev­er­al air­craft that will be used for the final phase of FAA flight test­ing. TIA is the final major step in the process of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and puts us with­in direct line of sight of a ful­ly cer­ti­fied air­craft ready for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.”

Joby expects its pilots to start fly­ing this air­craft in 2025, with FAA pilots fol­low­ing short­ly there­after to direct­ly eval­u­ate the aircraft’s per­for­mance and safe­ty. This test­ing is cen­tral to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and forms a key part of the fifth, and final, stage of the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process.

The final assem­bly of Joby’s first con­form­ing air­craft is the cul­mi­na­tion of years of devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and flight test­ing of mul­ti­ple air­craft that val­i­dat­ed design and capa­bil­i­ties. Suc­cess­ful tests includ­ed sta­t­ic load test­ing on pri­ma­ry aerostruc­tures, where engi­neers applied forces far exceed­ing expect­ed flight loads.

This work pro­vid­ed essen­tial data and val­i­dat­ed the aircraft’s struc­tur­al integri­ty. Air­craft com­po­nents and sys­tems were also test­ed, incor­po­rat­ing impor­tant instru­men­ta­tion and sen­sor cal­i­bra­tion essen­tial for TIA. 

Papadopou­los added: “We said we’d deliv­er a con­form­ing air­craft in 2025 and that’s exact­ly what we’re doing, all in align­ment with FAA sup­port. Meet­ing our TIA goals is a direct reflec­tion of our team’s extra­or­di­nary ded­i­ca­tion. Every step for­ward is a tes­ta­ment to their unwa­ver­ing focus on safe­ly bring­ing this air­craft to mar­ket.”

The progress Joby has made in devel­op­ing a con­form­ing air­craft under­scores the val­ue of its ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion strat­e­gy, which has enabled in-house design, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and test­ing.

Joby believes this approach has accel­er­at­ed devel­op­ment, main­tained qual­i­ty con­trol, and stream­lined the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process. In addi­tion, its recent man­u­fac­tur­ing expan­sion in Cal­i­for­nia and Ohio along with the Company’s close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Toy­ota, will enable Joby to dou­ble its pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty to 24 air­craft per year.

Joby will be releas­ing its sec­ond quar­ter 2025 finan­cial results after mar­ket close today (Wednes­day) and will host a web­cast at 5pm ET. The web­cast will be pub­licly avail­able in the Upcom­ing Events sec­tion of the com­pa­ny web­site, www.jobyaviation.com.