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To Come
For the nascent advanced air mobility industry, 2024 looks to be the year in which the rubber truly meets the road. Leading air taxi startups that have spent years developing and testing with subscale and remote demonstrators are gearing up to begin for-credit piloted flight testing using full-scale, production-conforming prototypes.
But that work is proceeding against an extremely aggressive timetable that will challenge the ability of leading air taxi OEMs Archer, Joby and Volocopter to execute their testing regimes, certify their aircraft and launch commercial services according to their publicly stated goals.
- Archer has about seven months to complete testing for FAA, while Joby has around nine months
- Volocopter Olympic plans face opposition
Whether they can meet those targets is an open question, but there is little debate that their schedules leave almost no margin for error.
Archer and Joby
U.S. startups Archer and Joby have been testing with nonconforming prototypes ahead of their expected rollout of conforming prototypes in early 2024. The two companies aim to launch into for-credit testing by the middle of the year, with hopes to certify their aircraft by year-end in time for service entry in early 2025.
But that leaves both startups with extremely compressed timelines to complete their for-credit flight-test campaigns with the FAA. For Archer, that translates to about seven months, while Joby has around nine months due to a slightly earlier projected start date, according to a report from SMG Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that specializes in advanced air mobility.
Such a tight schedule for for-credit FAA testing of a clean-sheet aircraft—no less a novel design like a tiltrotor electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) vehicle—has never been accomplished. Citing data from previous aircraft certification campaigns, SMG’s report arrives at a “best-case scenario” of 12-18 months to complete for-credit testing, indicating that delays are likely, if not inevitable.
“These timelines require a lot of confidence that everything will go well because there really is no room left for delays,” SMG founder and Partner Sergio Cecutta tells Aviation Week. “I don’t want to bet against Archer or Joby, but it seems to me that hitting all their milestones in the next year will be difficult for both companies.”
Perhaps recognizing that the odds of achieving type certification by late 2024 are slipping, executives from the two companies have instead pivoted their messaging to focus solely on achieving service entry in 2025, although the year-end targets still technically remain.
“We’ve always been careful not to overpromise and to be really honest and transparent about where we’re at,” Archer Chief Commercial Officer Nikhil Goel tells Aviation Week. “For us, 2025 has always been the answer, and that’s what we’re tracking to.”
Even though the two startups are mostly neck and neck in their race to certify their eVTOLs, Joby may have better prospects of meeting its goal before Archer. While Joby will still have to contend with a tight for-credit flight-test schedule, the company has more than 30,000 hr. of flight testing under its belt with full-scale prototypes, mostly remote, conducted over more than five years.
As such, Joby could launch into for-credit flight testing earlier in the year than Archer, as Archer likely will have to spend additional time with piloted flight tests before launching its own for-credit campaign around the middle of the year.
For Archer, a rushed testing schedule introduces added risk. A compressed uncrewed testing campaign may not allow enough time to fully understand how its full-scale aircraft behaves throughout the full flight envelope, and pilots may not have enough time to get comfortable with the Midnight before launching into crewed, for-credit testing in the second half of the year.
“Both companies face the same pressures, but we think Joby has a bit more breathing room,” Cecutta says. “They have had more time to get familiar with the airplane, and the overall risk is lower, but it still won’t be easy.”
Volocopter
With a goal of launching commercial services at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, Volocopter has the tightest schedule of all the eVTOL startups. The company has been building two fully conforming Volo-City aircraft for use in for-credit flight testing with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), although those aircraft still have not flown due to supplier delays related to powertrain components, according to Volocopter Chief Commercial and Financial Officer Christian Bauer.
Those delays to the conforming production rollout threaten Volocopter’s already shaky timeline, reducing the window to conduct for-credit flight testing to just six months maximum, according to SMG’s report. Even if the company is able to pull off that feat, it will have less than two months to prepare for the commercial launch—hardly an ideal position for such a momentous event.
Even if Volocopter had enough time to complete its type certification campaign, there are growing signs of discontent bubbling under the surface from community and environmental groups. In September, France’s Environmental Authority urged airport operator Groupe ADP, which is overseeing the Paris initiative alongside Skyports Infrastructure and Volocopter, to revisit its environmental assessment, which it described as “incomplete.”
Separately, a handful of Paris city council members in November issued a statement blasting the proposed Paris launch as an “ecological aberration,” while Dan Lert, deputy mayor in charge of environmental issues, described it as “a totally useless, hyper-polluting gimmick for a few ultra-privileged people in a hurry.”
Bauer, however, does not see the environmental objectors as standing in the way of the company’s plans. He tells Aviation Week that the opposition is mainly focused on the startup’s plans to erect a vertiport on a floating barge on the river Seine, while the other planned services—including shuttle flights between Paris’ Charles de Gaulle and Le Bourget airports—have generated little criticism. Moreover, he described the resistance as part of a natural dialog that was to be expected in the lead-up to services.
“This is exactly the right time to discuss these topics and engage with those parties that may have controversial opinions,” Bauer says. “We still think the majority that we see are very excited and enthusiastic.”
Assuming the community opposition does not succeed at derailing Volocopter’s launch plans, the company’s extremely compressed timeline will pressure its ability to satisfy regulators and achieve type certification in time to launch service in the summer of 2024, raising the likelihood that it will have to seek a special operating permit from European regulators to fly the noncertified aircraft on a more limited basis than originally envisioned.
Volocopter is sticking to its original timeline for now, although Bauer noted the possibility that type certification may slide to the end of 2024.
“We have always said that mid-2024 was ambitious, because we knew it was a new technology, and there are many moving parts,” Bauer says. “But we are sticking to our assessment that it will be certified next year. We have a fixed target for mid-2024, but it can move according to the certification timeline, testing or supply chain.
“We’ll be doing everything to roll our sleeves up and make it happen by the middle of the year,” he adds. “Will it be a challenging endeavor? Yes, but that is our challenge.”
With 2024 just around the corner, the odds that Volocopter can type-certify the VoloCity on schedule appear to be shrinking quickly.
“Personally, I just don’t get how they expect to satisfy all the requirements of EASA in under six months,” Cecutta says. “Maybe there could be a miracle or they pull some kind of rabbit out of their hats. But really, I have no idea how they pull this off.”
