VIDEO: Joby Aviation Achieves First Piloted eVTOL Air Taxi Flight Between Two Public Airports in California

Joby Avi­a­tion has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its first flight between air­ports in Mari­na (OAR) and Mon­terey (MRY) in Cal­i­for­nia.

The mile­stone was oper­at­ed with oth­er air­craft in FAA-con­trolled air­space and is a major step as part of Joby’s com­mer­cial mar­ket readi­ness, high­light­ing key capa­bil­i­ties across safe­ty, oper­a­tions, air traf­fic con­trol and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion progress.

Joby’s flight time from OAR to MRY was approx­i­mate­ly 12 min­utes over 10 nau­ti­cal miles, includ­ing five min­utes in a hold pat­tern at MRY for air traf­fic spac­ing. The pilot­ed flight includ­ed ver­ti­cal take­off, tran­si­tion to wing­borne flight, inte­gra­tion into the con­trolled air­space around MRY, and ver­ti­cal land­ing.

The mile­stone marks the first time a pilot­ed eVTOL air taxi has flown from one pub­lic air­port to anoth­er. The flight also suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ed the team’s abil­i­ty to con­duct mobile flight tests and deliv­er full ground sup­port oper­a­tions away from home base in Mari­na.

Didi­er Papadopou­los, Pres­i­dent of Air­craft OEM at Joby, said: “Suc­cess­ful­ly fly­ing from Mari­na to Mon­terey show­cased oper­a­tions of our air­craft inte­grat­ed in the broad­er trans­porta­tion net­work and fur­ther val­i­dat­ed its per­for­mance to ensure we’re pre­pared for ser­vice on day one.

“For years, our flight test­ing has val­i­dat­ed our aircraft’s capa­bil­i­ties, and we’ve done this across a wide range of envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions. As part of the nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion of our flight test pro­gram, it was time to ven­ture fur­ther, and there was no bet­ter place to vis­it first than our neigh­bors in Mon­terey.”

These crit­i­cal flight tests also pro­vid­ed devel­op­men­tal data relat­ed to the human fac­tors of oper­at­ing the air­craft at a con­trolled air­port and in the enroute nation­al air­space.

In par­tic­u­lar, Joby’s abil­i­ty to inte­grate into con­trolled air­space was demon­strat­ed when its air­craft suc­cess­ful­ly sequenced with oth­er air­craft at Mon­terey Air­port, includ­ing a hold­ing pat­tern to accom­mo­date anoth­er arriv­ing air­lin­er.

Joby’s air­craft sys­tems, pilot cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and train­ing were on full dis­play by adher­ing to the same air traf­fic con­trol pro­to­cols as a major air­line.

This is also an impor­tant step in the Company’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts, as the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) requires air­craft to demon­strate they can oper­ate in shared air­space by fly­ing between mul­ti­ple air­ports.

On the heels of Joby’s planned acqui­si­tion of Blade Air Mobility’s pas­sen­ger busi­ness, the demon­stra­tion con­tin­ues to show the Company’s com­mer­cial mar­ket readi­ness.

The achieve­ment builds on Joby’s long his­to­ry of test­ing and devel­op­ment, includ­ing more than 40,000 miles flown across its fleet. Joby recent­ly began final assem­bly of its first air­craft intend­ed for Type Inspec­tion Autho­riza­tion flight test­ing, one of the last major steps in FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. It plans to begin flight test­ing with FAA pilots ear­ly next year.

Fol­low­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Joby is plan­ning to launch com­mer­cial ser­vice domes­ti­cal­ly start­ing in Los Ange­les and New York City.