Joby Applies for Aircraft Certification in Australia

Joby Aviation, a company developing electric air taxis for commercial passenger service with headquarters in the US, has announced that it has formally applied for its revolutionary aircraft to be certified for use in Australia.

Joby’s application to Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for the validation of an FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) type certification builds on a bi-lateral agreement between the US regulator and CASA, and it lays the groundwork for the introduction of quiet, emissions-free air taxis in Australia.

Joby’s Founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said that they were excited about the potential for air taxis to offer new and more sustainable ways to travel around Australia’s global cities.

“With commercial powered-lift operations already considered in CASA’s regulatory frameworks, we are pleased to be working with Australian authorities using a regulatory path to market that is actively being pursued by numerous countries around the world,” he said.

Joby’s electric air taxi is designed to carry a pilot and four passengers at speeds of up to 200 mph, offering high-speed mobility with a fraction of the noise produced by helicopters and zero operating emissions.

To date, Joby has completed more than 33,000 miles of all-electric flight with full-scale prototype aircraft and, in November 2023, Joby became the first electric air taxi company to fly in a major US city, taking off from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in New York and demonstrating its aircraft’s quiet acoustics for an audience including Mayor Eric Adams, who announced the city’s intention to electrify the heliport.

Multi-Year Process

Type certification is a multi-year process which sees a company undertake rigorous testing and documentation across each aircraft system to prove the aircraft meets safety standards and is ready for commercial operations.

Joby is the first electric air taxi developer to have its FAA certification basis published in the US Federal Register, and was also the first company to complete the first, second and third of five stages of the FAA type certification process required for commercial service.

Joby has also applied to have its FAA type certificate, once received, validated by the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB) and the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

In June 2024, the Company announced it had received FAA authorisation to use a suite of software tools developed in-house, called ElevateOS, that are designed to enable high-tempo, on-demand air taxi operations.

Joby has been actively developing and testing these software tools, in-house, since acquiring Uber Elevate, the air taxi division of Uber in 2021. In 2019, Uber Elevate launched and ran UberCopter, the world’s first on-demand, multi-modal air taxi service, using traditional helicopters that were bookable via the Uber app.

Joby is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has raised more than $2 billion of funding to date, including investments from Toyota, Delta Air Lines, SK Telecom, Uber and Baillie Gifford.