Dive Brief:
- The Federal Aviation Administration announced Monday its selection of five air taxi pilot programs in six states.
- The program could see air taxis operating this year in New York City, Florida, Texas, North Carolina and locations across the Pacific Northwest, the Rocky Mountains and parts of Oklahoma.
- Other air mobility projects the FAA announced include cargo drones, emergency medical response operations, regional passenger transportation and offshore operations in the Gulf of Mexico, covering 26 states.
Dive Insight:
The projects come under the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program to spur the deployment of advanced air mobility vehicles into the U.S. airspace. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a video that eVTOLs “are going to make the airspace far more interesting and far more fun, and we have to be prepared for that.”
Archer Aviation will be involved in programs in New York, Florida and Texas, partnering with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Florida Department of Transportation and the Texas Department of Transportation. “This is the clearest sign yet from the White House, the FAA and the DOT that bringing air taxis to market in the United States is a real priority,” Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein said in a statement.
Industry partners will collaborate on 12 different operational concepts across New England in addition to the New York-New Jersey project, the FAA said.
Joby Aviation said it may be able to start early operations this year in Arizona, Florida, Idaho, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Utah. “Instead of just reading about the future of flight, communities across America are going to be able to see it in the skies above their own cities this year,” Joby Aviation founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in a statement.
Boeing subsidiary Wisk Aero will initially focus on Texas, where regional flights could connect Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and, eventually, Houston. Wisk said in a news release that it views the pilot program “as a crucial operational bridge” to “accelerate the safe, efficient, and equitable integration” of autonomous and piloted aircraft.
Reliable Robotics, which develops autonomous flight technologies, will work with Albuquerque’s aviation department on self-flying air cargo operations from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Durango, Colorado.
The next step is for the projects to finalize operational details and agreements, with flights beginning within the following 90 days. The pilot program will run for three years after the first project becomes operational, according to the FAA.
