Advanced Air Mobility Coordination and Leadership Act signed into US Law by President Biden

US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has signed the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Coor­di­na­tion and Lead­er­ship Act into law by estab­lish­ing an inter-agency work­ing group to engage the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment more effec­tive­ly in fur­ther­ing the advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) sec­tor.

This will pro­mote poli­cies, pro­ce­dures and pro­grams to sup­port the inte­gra­tion of this emerg­ing avi­a­tion sec­tor into America’s trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture. AAM moves peo­ple and prop­er­ty by air using eVTOL air­craft in rur­al and urban envi­ron­ments with air­craft rang­ing in size from sin­gle-pas­sen­ger to larg­er shut­tles.

NBAA pres­i­dent and CEO Ed Bolen said: “AAM will enhance on-demand air mobil­i­ty and help make the Unit­ed States a leader in this excit­ing space.”

The law instructs the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (DOT) to estab­lish an AAM inter-agency work­ing group to coor­di­nate gov­ern­ment efforts relat­ed to the safe­ty, oper­a­tions, infra­struc­ture, phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and fed­er­al invest­ment nec­es­sary to bol­ster the AAM ecosys­tem in the U.S.

The leg­is­la­tion calls AAM “a key area of sus­tain­able trans­porta­tion and eco­nom­ic growth for the Unit­ed States” and rec­og­nizes that “it is imper­a­tive that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment fos­ter lead­er­ship and inter­a­gency col­lab­o­ra­tion in the adop­tion and deploy­ment of this tech­nol­o­gy.”

NBAA worked to get the bill passed through Con­gress as part of a larg­er effort by the asso­ci­a­tion and its stake­hold­ers to pro­mote AAM, includ­ing work­ing with fed­er­al agen­cies to draft guid­ance on ver­ti­ports and secu­ri­ty best prac­tices.

NBAA is also sup­port­ing anoth­er bill, the Advanced Avi­a­tion Infra­struc­ture Mod­ern­iza­tion (AAIM) Act, which directs the US Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion to cre­ate a pilot pro­gramme to offer plan­ning and con­struc­tion grants to sup­port the devel­op­ment of need­ed infra­struc­ture such as pub­lic-use ver­ti­ports.

In addi­tion, NBAA last year launched the AAM Round­table, aimed at pro­vid­ing a forum for high-lev­el pol­i­cy plan­ning with sec­tor lead­ers to help inte­grate AAM tech­nolo­gies into U.S. air­space and trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture.

Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (GAMA) pres­i­dent and CEO Pete Bunce, said: “We bear wit­ness to a sig­nif­i­cant day for the growth of advanced air mobil­i­ty, which will facil­i­tate addi­tion­al trans­porta­tion options, cre­ate jobs, stim­u­late eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness, advance envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, fos­ter fur­ther advance­ment in aero­space tech­nol­o­gy and sup­port emer­gency pre­pared­ness.

“We hope that the Act, which has over­whelm­ing bipar­ti­san Con­gres­sion­al sup­port, will spur fed­er­al gov­ern­ment depart­ments and agen­cies to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and aggres­sive­ly towards the devel­op­ment of a nation­al strat­e­gy for inte­grat­ing AAM vehi­cles into the nation­al air­space sys­tem.”

The work­ing group will be tasked to review and make rec­om­men­da­tions for the fed­er­al role in the AAM sec­tor, beyond the ini­tial crit­i­cal stage of air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and oper­a­tions, with a focus on eco­nom­ic and work­force oppor­tu­ni­ties, poten­tial phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal secu­ri­ty risks and mit­i­ga­tions, and infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment.

Bunce added: “The estab­lish­ment of this gov­ern­ment work­ing group builds upon the momen­tum that came out this summer’s White House Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Sum­mit, which can hope­ful­ly be car­ried over into this work­ing group’s efforts as well as FAA’s work to effi­cient­ly pave the way for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of these vehi­cles.”

White House holds sum­mit on Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty