Middle East: “Joby Aviation Affirms Early 2026 launch For Passenger Flights”

Speak­ing recent­ly at the ‘Re-indus­tri­alise Sum­mit’ Con­fer­ence in Detroit, JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, affirmed his ambi­tion of tar­get­ing the first Mid­dle East pas­sen­ger flights dur­ing the Spring of 2026, reports evpowered.co.uk. The launch will occur in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE).

Joby is cur­rent­ly apply­ing for an Air Oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate from the UAE Gen­er­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and recent­ly com­plet­ed a suc­cess­ful test flight in Dubai. These flights will be fol­lowed by the roll­out of a broad­er air taxi net­work in the U.S, includ­ing New York and Los Ange­les, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Delta Air­lines and Uber.

Ini­tial plans are to use five of its eVTOL air­craft dur­ing one of the final phas­es of FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the com­ing months of this year, before the much antic­i­pat­ed 2026 com­mer­cial launch.

Bevirt explained that the com­pa­ny requires only one cer­ti­fied air­craft to ini­ti­ate air tours and two to launch sched­uled urban routes, in par­tic­u­lar air­port trans­fers. He empha­sised, “We only need one to start air tours and two to begin a route.”

The Planned Dubai (DXB) Ver­ti­port

This lat­est news comes on the back of the com­pa­ny dou­bling its pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty at the Mari­na, Cal­i­for­nia facil­i­ty, by expand­ing the site to 435,000 sq. ft. Joby now expects to man­u­fac­ture 24 eVTOL air­craft annu­al­ly dou­bling the pre­vi­ous num­ber of 12.

The Mari­na site has already pro­duced six air­craft, includ­ing the lat­est unit, which received air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with­in a week and is already in flight test­ing. The site also fea­tures train­ing sim­u­la­tors, main­te­nance bays and pro­duc­tion areas for con­form­ing com­po­nents, a foun­da­tion for secur­ing FAA pro­duc­tion cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The com­pa­ny has also acquired a 140-acre site at Day­ton Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, Ohio. This facil­i­ty, set to span 2 mil­lion sq. ft, will even­tu­al­ly be capa­ble of pro­duc­ing up to 500 eVTOLs annu­al­ly. Pro­duc­tion of tita­ni­um and alu­mini­um com­po­nents is expect­ed to begin this year.

Mean­while, Joby has also been con­duct­ing tri­als in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the U.S Air Force (USAF) at Edwards Air Force Base, and has com­mit­ted to deliv­er­ing two air­craft to MacDill Air Force Base by the end of this year.

The com­pa­ny’s finan­cial strength is pri­mar­i­ly down to Toy­ota Motor Corps who has invest­ed now close to USD900 mil­lion after a pend­ing sec­ond USD250 mil­lion tranche. Toy­ota is also sup­ply­ing the fly­ing taxi firm with some of its top engi­neers embed­ded across the design, qual­i­ty and man­u­fac­tur­ing teams, to cre­ate “smooth process­es” while ensur­ing scal­able pro­duc­tion.

In a fur­ther vote of con­fi­dence, Joby has entered into a long-term agree­ment with the auto­mo­bile com­pa­ny to sup­ply key com­po­nents includ­ing pow­er­trains and actu­a­tors. Toy­ota is also explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to man­u­fac­ture and oper­ate the eVTOL in Japan.

Yet, the ongo­ing good news doesn’t stop there. 

Bevirt has been enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly post­ing on ‘X’ this week about MOSAIC. This rul­ing rep­re­sents a major land­mark devel­op­ment for the eVTOL indus­try as a whole. He writes, “MOSAIC has been signed! I expect this to be the most impor­tant accel­er­ant to avi­a­tion inno­va­tion in my career, and it’s a huge moment for avi­a­tion in the U.S.”

The MOSAIC (Mod­erni­sa­tion of Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion) rule, will sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact eVTOL air­craft by allow­ing them to be cer­ti­fied as Light Sport Air­craft (LSA). This should stream­line the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process, mak­ing it eas­i­er and faster for elec­tric air taxis to enter the mar­ket. It may also open up new pos­si­bil­i­ties for eVTOL design and oper­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for small­er, per­son­al-use craft like Dri­ve & Fly and gen­er­al fly­ing vehi­cles.

@FAANews MOSAIC has been signed! I expect this to be the most impor­tant accel­er­ant to avi­a­tion inno­va­tion in my career, and it’s a huge moment for avi­a­tion in the U.S. Here’s why:

— JoeBen Bevirt (@joeben) July 22, 2025

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jobyaviation.com

News Source: https://evpowered.co.uk/

(Images: Joby Avi­a­tion)

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