PAS 2025: Senior leaders from AAM OEMs applaud Five-Country Alliance to Streamline Certification Process For eVTOL Aircraft

The CEOs of Archer, Joby Avi­a­tion, BETA Tech­nolo­gies and Wisk joined US Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Sean Duffy at the Paris Air Show yes­ter­day (Tues­day), to show sup­port of a five-coun­try alliance which will stream­line the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and glob­al deploy­ment of eVTOL air­craft.

This alliance, which includes the USA, UK, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and New Zealand, has the poten­tial to cre­ate a smooth path­way to bring elec­tric air taxis to the skies of oth­er coun­tries, once a par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny obtains FAA type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the USA.

In a rare moment, Adam Gold­stein, Kyle Clark, JoeBen Bevirt and Sebastien Vigneron were all present togeth­er with James Vio­la, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion Man­u­fac­tur­er’s Asso­ci­a­tion (GAMA), and act­ing FAA Admin­is­tra­tor Chris Roche­leau.

Giv­ing an address, Duffy said: “There is a push for inno­va­tion in Amer­i­ca and there was a time when a gov­ern­ment was cre­at­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions which made it dif­fi­cult to inno­vate in Amer­i­ca; those days are over.

“We’re excit­ed to announce we have a new roadmap to fig­ure out a path of how we’re going to deal with Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM). We should all be on the same page and think we should have one frame­work which com­pa­nies around the world can abide by.”

Roche­leau said: “All of the work that gone into this is direct­ly relat­ed to the lead­er­ship of the sec­re­tary and admin­is­tra­tion, and mak­ing sure as we build out these inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies in this sec­tor, it’s crit­i­cal we think about the world. It’s crit­i­cal that we work to con­verge our val­i­da­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“We’ve devel­oped a roadmap for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty and tight cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when we think about export­ing these prod­ucts around the world. The roadmap aims to align coun­tries’ AAM air­wor­thi­ness and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards. My coun­ter­parts and I have signed a dec­la­ra­tion of intent to imple­ment the prin­ci­ples around this.

“This is a cul­mi­na­tion of work over many months with some amaz­ing part­ners and also marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in meet­ing the chal­lenges of this emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy. By work­ing togeth­er, we will ensure the intro­duc­tion of AAM air­craft is safe and effi­cient both domes­ti­cal­ly in the Unit­ed States, but just as impor­tant­ly, around the world when we talk about the US prod­ucts we want to pro­mote.”

He added: “The chal­lenges of cer­ti­fy­ing these air­craft are not unique and that’s why we’ve part­nered with the five coun­tries to ensure this broad co-oper­a­tion exists as we con­tin­ue to devel­op this tech­nol­o­gy.”

OEM com­ments:

Adam Gold­stein, Archer Founder and CEO: “If you ever want­ed to see a bat sig­nal go up into the air and say Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty is here — eVTOLS will be built — they will be cer­ti­fied and brought around the world — that is now.

“The Admin­is­tra­tion has made it clear: lead­er­ship in advanced avi­a­tion is a pri­or­i­ty for Pres­i­dent Trump and for the Unit­ed States. This alliance paves the way for the inter­na­tion­al deploy­ment of our Mid­night air­craft and is anoth­er step towards bring­ing these air­craft to skies around the world.”

JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion: “We applaud the author­i­ties for their efforts to coa­lesce around a com­mon approach to approv­ing eVTOL in their respec­tive coun­tries. We’re grate­ful to the found­ing mem­bers of the NAA Net­work for their vision and for mak­ing this ini­tia­tive a real­i­ty.”

Kyle Clark, BETA Tech­nolo­gies Founder and CEO: “I think it’s great that the head of GAMA is on first name basis with the FAA Admin­is­tra­tor; it means a lot to us that this part­ner­ship is real­ly tight. And from my per­spec­tive, one of the things that all reg­u­la­tors recog­nise is that we as an indus­try want the exact same thing as a reg­u­la­tor; a safe, reli­able and repeat­ed­ly pro­duced air­craft.

“But it can’t be pro­duced and make the best of the tech­nol­o­gy that we work so hard to bring to mar­ket, if it is con­strained to a par­tic­u­lar mar­ket. For us, our entry point is rur­al access, car­go, med­ical, logis­tics, then step­ping into pas­sen­gers. These dimen­sions of access to mar­ket are impor­tant as well. The har­mon­i­sa­tion is real­ly impor­tant and fun­da­men­tal­ly eco­nom­ic.”

Sebastien Vigneron, CEO of Wisk: “We talk about stars being aligned and this is a great momen­tum. It’s on us to make it hap­pen and it is paving the way for the future of not only Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, but also every­thing we are devel­op­ing here which will ben­e­fit the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. We can make it safer, effi­cient and allow it to scale and it is on us to turn it in into a real­i­ty. It’s an excit­ing time.”

Fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s recent Exec­u­tive Order, this is yet anoth­er exam­ple of an increas­ing eVTOL indus­try momen­tum with the empha­sis on engage­ment between reg­u­la­to­ry and mar­ket lead­ers.

(Top image: US Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Sean Duffy deliv­ers a speech on Day Two of the Paris Air Show yes­ter­day (Tues­day). To the left are JoeBen Bivert (Joby Avi­a­tion), Sebastien Vigneron (Wisk), Kyle Clark (BETA Tech­nolo­gies) and Adam Gold­stein (Archer).

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