SkyDrive Reaches Agreement with Japan’s Civil Aviation Authority on its General Certification Plan

Sky­Drive has reached agree­ment with the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) on the Gen­er­al Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan for its SD-05 eVTOL air­craft, rep­re­sent­ing a major step for­ward in the aircraft’s type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram.

The Gen­er­al Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan describes the over­all plan of activ­i­ties required to demon­strate the aircraft’s com­pli­ance with legal require­ments, includ­ing the process­es and coop­er­a­tive steps that will be required between JCAB and SKYDRIVE to achieve type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

As agree­ment with the plan shows that the JCAB is aligned with Sky­Drive on how to demon­strate the over­all safe­ty of the air­craft, the agree­ment rep­re­sents a core cer­ti­fi­ca­tion mile­stone that sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces future type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion risk.

Arnaud Cov­ille, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, Sky­Drive, said: “Reach­ing agree­ment with JCAB on the Gen­er­al Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan rep­re­sents an extreme­ly sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for Sky­Drive.

“The agree­ment, which short­ens the pro­ject­ed time­line for com­pli­ance activ­i­ties and reduces future risk, shows that we are on the right track for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our Air­craft with the JCAB and FAA. Only a very lim­it­ed num­ber of play­ers world­wide have reached this stage in the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process.

“We will first advance type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with the JCAB and then, work­ing togeth­er with Japan’s Min­istry of Land, Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Tourism (MLIT), look to make fur­ther progress along path­way to FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

He added: “Look­ing ahead to the com­mer­cial launch of our eVTOL in 2028, we will con­tin­ue to move steadi­ly for­ward with our air­craft devel­op­ment.”

When cer­ti­fy­ing an air­craft, agree­ment with the reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty must be reached not only on the Gen­er­al Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan, but also on the var­i­ous oth­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plans which cov­er oth­er aspects of the air­craft hard­ware and per­for­mance.

Exam­ples include the indi­vid­ual Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plans for struc­ture, sys­tems, elec­tric motors and noise. Sky­Drive has already sub­mit­ted all of these oth­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plans to the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB), where they are cur­rent­ly under review.

Once agree­ment is reached on all fur­ther Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plans, the pro­gram will advance to start com­pli­ance test­ing, which is expect­ed in the near future and marks sig­nif­i­cant progress toward achiev­ing Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, mark­ing what can be described as the final stage of the devel­op­ment phase.

To recap, the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process con­sists of six over­all steps. With the con­clu­sion of the new agree­ment on the Gen­er­al Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan, and with sig­nif­i­cant progress towards agree­ment over the Means of Com­pli­ance required to align the remain­ing sys­tem-spe­cif­ic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion plans, Sky­Drive is mov­ing steadi­ly for­wards toward the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the Steps 3 and 4 shown above.

■ Step 3 and 4 in Brief:
Step 3: Agree­ment on Means of Com­pli­ance
This step defines the detailed design stan­dards that indi­cate how Sky­Drive will show com­pli­ance with the require­ments estab­lished under the Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Basis agreed in Step 2.

E.g. Agree that rotors should be assessed by con­duct­ing rotor dura­bil­i­ty tests and con­firm­ing that the rotors pass the tests undam­aged.

Step 4: Agree­ment on the Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan
This step involves agree­ment on the spe­cif­ic details of how to exe­cute the tests deter­mined in Step 3.

E.g. Agree to per­form the rotor dura­bil­i­ty tests as a ground-based rig test con­duct­ed using a motor and rotor assem­bly.