By Dan Catchpol and Pranav Mathur
March 11 (Reuters) – Joby Aviation said on Wednesday its first aircraft has begun flying and will undergo certification testing by federal regulators to obtain type inspection authorization (TIA), a key milestone in certifying the aircraft for commercial operations.
Joby said pilots have begun preliminary testing of the air taxi at the company’s facility in Marina, California. The test flights are a precursor to an evaluation by Federal Aviation Administration pilots later this year.
Joby has been working with regulators for years to approve the design, plans and parts used to build the aircraft, the company’s first production model. Joby test pilots have flown more than 50,000 miles (80,500 kilometers) in the company’s development aircraft.
Joby’s air taxi is a six-rotor electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically like a helicopter or fly horizontally like an airplane, and can accommodate a pilot and four passengers. The company announced in February that it plans to begin flights later this year in Dubai, where two of four landing sites are already under construction.
The company will begin limited operations in the United States this year as a participant in a White House-backed program to speed the integration of electric air taxis and other small aircraft into national airspace. Joby is participating in five of the eight pilot programs announced Monday by the FAA, which oversees the program.
Joby aims to produce four aircraft per month by 2027 at its manufacturing facilities in California and Dayton, Ohio.
(Reporting by Pranav Mathur in Bengaluru and Dan Catchpole in Seattle; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
