Joby prepares for final flight testing required for type certification
Electric air taxi developer Joby Aviation is readying to enter the final stage of flight testing needed before FAA can issue a type certificate for its all-electric S4, the first in the industry.
For this TIA phase, short for Type Inspection Authorization, the company is building five aircraft in the exact configuration it intends to operate for passenger flights, said Didier Papadopoulos, Joby’s president of Aircraft Original Equipment Manufacturing, in a Friday call with reporters.
Plans call for FAA pilots to fly these conforming aircraft next year, which Joby hopes will clear the way for the S4 to receive type certification.
“Most of what we’ve been doing over the past few years for FAA credit has been testing components and subsystems,” Papadopoulos said. “These [TIA] flights will be very similar to the flying that we’ve been doing, but this will be for credit testing. And the main difference is, this aircraft was built purposefully for FAA to be able to get on board, fly and give us credit.”
He added that TIA testing will not require flying faster, further or higher than S4 prototypes have already flown.
The first of these conforming aircraft is fully assembled and Joby has powered it on to begin safety tests, Papadopoulos said. The company intends for its own pilots fly the aircraft before the FAA flights.
Papadopoulos said Joby has logged hundreds of flight hours this year with preproduction prototypes: “This year, we’re past 600 flights, certainly an average of more than a flight a day, or almost two flights a day.”
That frequency is “one of the elements that gives me a lot of confidence that once we get into TIA, it’s close to rinse and repeat” he said.
Despite this, Joby knows type certification is not guaranteed, nor is receiving the certificate on a specific timeline, Eric Allison, Joby’s chief product officer, said on the call.
“We have set ourselves up in the best way possible, built the relationships and the confidence and been very open and transparent with FAA about how we do things and how our technology works,” Allison said, “so we can have a smooth execution of this.”
And, Papadopoulos said, Joby executives aren’t overconfident. “I’ve been in this industry a long time to know that this is going to be hard,” he said.
