Pivotal Secures Major Manufacturing and Safety Milestone with AS9100D Certification

Piv­otal has become the first Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty pure-play eVTOL air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er in North Amer­i­ca to earn cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tem (QMS) to the AS9100D Man­age­ment Stan­dard for avi­a­tion, space and defense orga­ni­za­tions.

AS9100D cer­ti­fi­ca­tion val­i­dates Pivotal’s QMS (Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tem), which meets or exceeds bench­marks for oper­a­tional dis­ci­pline, risk man­age­ment, sup­ply chain man­age­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing excel­lence required to build air­craft.

With the man­u­fac­tur­ing ramp of Helix only weeks away, this marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the air­craft tech­nol­o­gy man­u­fac­tur­er.

Ken Karklin, CEO of Piv­otal, said: “Earn­ing AS9100D cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a nec­es­sary achieve­ment for Piv­otal. It reflects the rig­or of our process­es, the strength of our team, and our unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and world-class qual­i­ty as we scale pro­duc­tion and expand access to the sky through the pow­er of sim­pli­fied flight.”

The achieve­ment was award­ed fol­low­ing a com­pre­hen­sive, mul­ti-site audit of the company’s Palo Alto man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties, and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for both AS9100D and ISO9001:2015 were earned through a year-long col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ver­i­fy Inc., a World­wide Qual­i­ty Ser­vices Provider, and issued by the accred­it­ed reg­is­trar IAOCP Sys­tems Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Body (SBC).

Aero­space OEMs which pos­sess AS9100D cer­ti­fi­ca­tion employ active risk man­age­ment in all crit­i­cal aspects of oper­a­tions and may receive greater recog­ni­tion from cus­tomers and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors such as the EASA, DOD, NASA and the FAA.

Pivotal’s QMS is designed to exceed the rig­or­ous require­ments of AS9100D. By inte­grat­ing qual­i­ty into numer­ous busi­ness func­tions, Piv­otal ensures that safe­ty and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion are the respon­si­bil­i­ty of every employ­ee.

Matt Hubert, Vice Pres­i­dent, Qual­i­ty and MRO, Piv­otal, added: “Qual­i­ty isn’t just a stan­dard at Pivotal—it’s foun­da­tion­al to every­thing we do as we man­u­fac­ture light eVTOL air­craft. Every mem­ber of our team under­stands and proud­ly owns their role in strength­en­ing our qual­i­ty man­age­ment sys­tem, sup­port­ing safe and reli­able oper­a­tions, and ensur­ing we deliv­er air­craft that reflect our com­mit­ment to excel­lence.”

AS9100D is the pre­mier inter­na­tion­al Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tem (QMS) stan­dard specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to the Avi­a­tion, Space, and Defense indus­tries. It is built upon the com­plete frame­work of ISO 9001:2015, ensur­ing that an orga­ni­za­tion meets the same high-lev­el require­ments for cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and process improve­ment used by the world’s lead­ing busi­ness­es.

How­ev­er, AS9100D extends those fun­da­men­tals by incor­po­rat­ing over 100 addi­tion­al require­ments crit­i­cal to the aero­space sec­tor, includ­ing prod­uct safe­ty, coun­ter­feit parts pre­ven­tion, and com­pre­hen­sive risk man­age­ment.

By achiev­ing this cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion demon­strates that its qual­i­ty sys­tem is robust enough to han­dle the extreme pre­ci­sion and reli­a­bil­i­ty required for flight and defense appli­ca­tions, while remain­ing ful­ly com­pli­ant with the lat­est ISO 9001:2015 glob­al bench­marks.

Piv­otal designs, devel­ops, and man­u­fac­tures light eVTOL air­craft. The com­pa­ny is renowned for the Black­Fly, the first light pow­ered-lift eVTOL to be com­mer­cial­ly avail­able and deliv­ered to cus­tomers in the Unit­ed States.

In Octo­ber 2023, Piv­otal unveiled its next-gen­er­a­tion pro­duc­tion air­craft, the Helix, open­ing sales in Jan­u­ary 2024. As the first light eVTOL OEM to achieve AS9100D cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Piv­otal is ded­i­cat­ed to the high­est stan­dards of aero­space qual­i­ty and man­u­fac­tur­ing excel­lence.

The company’s dis­tinc­tive tilt-air­craft archi­tec­ture and scal­able tech­nol­o­gy plat­form have been under con­tin­u­ous improve­ment for well over a decade, and today, Piv­otal has the most mature tech­nol­o­gy in the light eVTOL and civil­ian pow­ered-lift cat­e­gories.

Piv­otal air­craft take off and land vertically—no run­way need­ed. Piv­otal air­craft offer incred­i­ble flex­i­bil­i­ty for a range of use cas­es includ­ing recre­ation, short-hop com­mutes, defense, and pub­lic safe­ty mis­sions.