Middle East: Joby Aviation pushes forward with deployment of its electric air taxis in Saudi Arabia

Joby Avi­a­tion has con­firmed plans for the rapid deploy­ment of its elec­tric air taxi in the King­dom of Sau­di Ara­bia, after sign­ing a new mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with the Gen­er­al Author­i­ty of Civ­il Avi­a­tion (GACA).

The part­ner­ship will use Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards as a foun­da­tion to cre­ate a stream­lined approval process for Joby’s eVTOL air­craft in Sau­di Ara­bia, help­ing to posi­tion the King­dom at the fore­front of advanced air mobil­i­ty in the Mid­dle East and across the world.

Sau­di Ara­bia joins the USA, UK, Japan, South Korea and the UAE as anoth­er key launch mar­ket for Joby’s air taxi ser­vice.

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, said: “We’ve been col­lab­o­rat­ing with the FAA since 2016 on the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the com­mer­cial oper­a­tions of our air­craft, and we’re now putting those stan­dards to work on a glob­al scale. 

“We look for­ward to part­ner­ing with GACA on this bold endeav­or: to bring qui­et, fast and con­ve­nient air mobil­i­ty to Sau­di Ara­bia.”

To sup­port the devel­op­ment of the King­dom’s air taxi reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, Joby and GACA will focus on three core ini­tia­tives based on Joby’s FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts:

• Pro­vide tech­ni­cal exper­tise across type design, pro­duc­tion, and oper­a­tional domains to inform the devel­op­ment of a com­pre­hen­sive reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that ensures the safe, effi­cient, and scal­able deploy­ment of advanced air mobil­i­ty air­craft with­in the King­dom.
• Col­lab­o­ra­tion on air­wor­thi­ness stan­dards, ensur­ing an effi­cient val­i­da­tion process of the FAA Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.
• Devel­op­ment and har­mo­niza­tion of key reg­u­la­tions to enable the ini­tial phase of oper­a­tions, includ­ing pilot licens­ing, main­te­nance, and air­space inte­gra­tion frame­works.

Cap­tain Sulaiman bin Saleh Al-Muhaime­di, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Avi­a­tion Safe­ty and Envi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty at (GACA), said: “This part­ner­ship rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal step in advanc­ing the Kingdom’s AAM ambi­tions. Our focus is not only on bring­ing future tech­nolo­gies to Sau­di Ara­bia, but on build­ing the knowl­edge and know-how required to sus­tain them.

“By local­iz­ing key ele­ments of man­u­fac­tur­ing and devel­op­ing high­ly qual­i­fied nation­al tal­ent, we are cre­at­ing an ecosys­tem that enables inno­va­tion to thrive. Sup­port­ed by a robust and for­ward-look­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, this ini­tia­tive rein­forces the Kingdom’s lead­er­ship in shap­ing the future of avi­a­tion, in align­ment with the AAM roadmap derived from the Avi­a­tion Pro­gramme in the Nation­al Trans­port and Logis­tics Strat­e­gy.”

Joby is set­ting the pace for the indus­try in pro­gress­ing toward reg­u­la­to­ry approval of its air­craft, posi­tion­ing it as an effec­tive part­ner to oth­er coun­tries for air taxi devel­op­ment.

In the USA, Joby is near­ing the final phase of FAA Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which involves FAA test pilots direct­ly assess­ing the aircraft’s per­for­mance and safe­ty. Glob­al­ly, Joby was deeply engaged in the devel­op­ment of the NAA Network’s five-nation roadmap, which aims to cre­ate glob­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards for advanced air mobil­i­ty.

Joby’s broad­er com­mer­cial­iza­tion strat­e­gy in Sau­di Ara­bia includes key part­ner­ships with Abdul Latif Jameel, which is explor­ing deliv­ery of up to 200 Joby air­craft val­ued at approx­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion, and Aloula Avi­a­tion (for­mer­ly Muka­malah Avi­a­tion), the avi­a­tion sub­sidiary of Sau­di Aram­co.

The announce­ment also builds on the renewed eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship between the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion and the Sau­di gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing U.S. Pres­i­dent Trump’s vis­it to Sau­di Ara­bia in May of this year.