Beyond The Hype—What’s Happening With Air Taxis
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Hi, welcome to Aviation Week's Check 6 podcast. I'm Ben Goldstein, Managing Editor of Aviation Week's AAM Report. And today we're going to be taking a look at the progress underway in the fast-growing advanced air mobility industry. Joining me are Graham Warwick, Executive Editor for Technology at Aviation Week, Jens Flathau, Executive Editor for Commercial Aviation,

and Sergio Chikuda, founder and partner at SMG Consulting. So as many listeners probably know,

leading makers of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, such as Archer, Beta Technologies, and Joby, are pushing forward on their roadmaps to type certification. But how far from the finish line are they? It seems like they all have different ways of tracking their progress. So what is the real story? When will we see type-certified eVTOLs? Sergio, would you like to get us started?

So I think it's a little bit of a nuanced answer. One of the things that has happened is because the companies have found a speedier way to market with denturing to service in the United Arab Emirates.

And so now we need to say, you know, we need to look at when are they going to get certified enter service in their region versus when are they going to get certified, for example, in the U.S.?

So one of the goals of UAE is to get these aircraft in the market to the population in service. And so what we will see is probably toward the latter part of this year, we will see tests of these aircraft in UAE with an entry into service that probably is going to be sometimes in the middle of next year.

When it comes to the US, this year is just going to be a year of

companies working on their progress. We still haven't seen any conforming aircraft, whatever conforming means right now. It's going to take time before TAA is assigned by the FAA. So I would say on the US front, do not expect a lot of progress. It's probably going to be a late 26, maybe even 27 when it comes to entry into service. Last but not least, if we talk about

Europe, it's a little bit now big I'm a corner case. Two of the European big companies, Lilium and Volocopter are in dire straits. The future is still a question mark, even with Lilium having received new capital, new ownership.

And then last but not least, I would say when it comes to vertical, new financing, new management. But at the same time, I think it's still going to take time to stabilize. So we won't see anything coming out there for quite some time. Graham, does that track with what you're seeing in your reporting?

Well, yes, very much so. I think we need to be very careful to advise the listeners to be skeptical on what they hear this year. There's going to be progress

Claimed isn't the right word, but the way this industry is working, because it's largely private equity venture funded, is that they're salami slicing the certification process the way we've never seen before. Airbus and Boeing don't do this. I mean, they don't give us every small step in the certification progress. So you see that you're getting a lot of these steps along the way that really aren't

major milestones. They're just another step along the way. And what happens is you get a flurry of headlines saying that they've passed this milestone or something and the share price goes up for a few days and then it goes back down again. And so you need to really understand that the only thing that matters is

as we stand today, is flying aircraft for which they can get certification credit for the testing, right? They have to get aircraft flying, but every hour those aircraft fly counts towards certification. We're not there yet. We're not there with anybody, really. And this is a process that, I don't know if Sergio will tell us what it is, but this is a process that would normally take, for

First flight through certification, 12 months, 18 months. You know, these are different types of airplanes. We've never flown these airplanes before. They only fly for 15, 20 minutes at a time. They're going to have thousands of these very short flights to do all the testing they need to do. But that is what matters. Nothing else matters.

TIA of a cockpit is a step, but it's a small step and it doesn't matter until you fly conforming aircraft. So we are not going to see any aircraft certified in the US or Europe with one possible exception. We should see it next year if there's no showstoppers that emerge as we go along.

The one exception is, and Jens will talk to this, but Volocopter, they were getting close to certification when they ran out of money. We don't know if they get an investor. We don't know what basis that investment will be made. Their initial airplane is not economically viable. Any new investor, I would think, would put the focus on a more economically viable aircraft. They had a bigger airplane in the plan when they went into insolvency.

So they may come back in a different form, which means that certification has changed in some way. We just don't know what that's going to happen there. Europe, by and large, if you look across Europe, and again, Jens will talk about this, they've lost two years. They were in a leading position at one point. The EASA, the regulator, was really leaning forward to help the industry. And then they ran out of money. And they've all lost at least two years on the original plan. 28 is the earliest we'll see any European airplane certified.

And it may even be later than that. So there's a big gap opened up between the West and Europe on that. But just be really careful. What to look for is flying type conform. However they describe it, these are aircraft that you fly for credit. That's all that matters this year is flying those airplanes. Once those aircraft are flying, the clock is running to certification. Jems, I want to bring you into the discussion now.

So Sergio and Graham have both mentioned a situation in which European eVTOL companies appear to be falling behind their US counterparts. So how severe do you think this divergence has become? And is that gap widening? I think it's very severe. I mean, there's basically three cases right now that we have to watch. One is Airbus.

They haven't really, I mean, they've been in a kind of a different league because they're Airbus, but they've been engaged in AAM just to keep track of things, but they've decided to officially pause the city Airbus project. I don't know whether pause is the right word. I also don't, I'm also not sure whether, you know, the reason they've given officially, which is, you know, the lack of progress in battery technology is the only reason. Could be the concept that's not working or, you know,

I'm personally not really clear what their strategy was in the first place. But of the new startups, the new companies, obviously, and focus...

Over here are Volocopter and Lilium. Both are insolvency. And if you asked me for both, it's still not looking good. Volocopter has until the end of February to find new money. If they don't find money by then, this could be the end of it. And as Graham mentions,

They're probably the most advanced in terms of certification, but the big question is of what? Of the two-seater. That's not commercially viable. So any new investor that looks at putting money into Volocopter will have to look at a much longer horizon, which includes the four-seater, which is the commercially more viable or viable product. And then we're not talking months until certifications or the end of this year, but

several years, as Graham says. Now, on the Lilium side, things seem to be getting worse every day. There was a big sigh of relief over Christmas when the new consortium appeared on the surface and affirmed everyone that they would put in 200 million.

which would obviously give the company more time. But since then, we haven't heard much. The latest we've heard is that wages for January haven't been paid, that there are some sort of roadblocks that are keeping the participants in the investment consortium from putting their money in, from transferring the money.

And obviously, time is of the essence. There's lots of highly skilled workers that want jobs that will probably find good jobs elsewhere. There's the whole supply chain that is waiting to see progress and that will not wait forever. So as optimistic as people have been a month ago, a month and a half ago,

I'm not so sure this will work out well in the end. It could change any day. We could see big news tomorrow, everything's sorted, money is there, the company will continue. But it could also go the other way still. And again, Lilium, big question. The 200 million, I would say, that's my personal opinion, that's not nearly enough to get them to where they need to be in the end certification. It'll be a lot more.

And people putting money into the company will have to be aware of that. So we've been talking about certification, but I want to turn to production. These companies talk a big talk about churning out hundreds or even thousands of aircraft per year. But how much production progress is really being made? Sergio, do you want to get us started?

Sure. So one thing that we need to note is that different companies are following different strategies when it comes to production. You take, for example, Adobe, that it's fully vertically integrated and that is going to be very different than other companies that are relying on suppliers. Now, one of the things that we need to see is that scaling in aerospace, it's not easy and it is always a byproduct of support from the supply chain.

We know that both in Europe and in the US, the large OEMs on their transport side have found it not easy to scale production. And the last thing that we need to bring into bear is the fact that in aerospace, we have never made...

We've made very few things in the hundreds or high hundreds a year. And so when you hear, you know, thousands of this vehicle, while it is not unheard of, it is not impossible. The last time we were making things in the thousands was about 80 to 90 years ago.

So what I would say is one of the things that we need to look at is how much time it takes to scale these facilities. And what I would say is if you just want to get a way to look at these things, you

you would have to have a little prototype line where you are troubleshooting your process for building this aircraft, making it repeatable, taking out anything that might be duplication, anything that might be waste until you've got to a process that you think it's good enough

will be deemed good enough by the certification authority. And EASA and FAA work slightly different. EASA wants you to have their approval before you start production

of even the type conforming aircraft. In the US it's a little bit different. The PC, this production certificate comes after the certification. At the beginning you will be producing the two airplanes, four airplanes until one of the milestones to look for is this one airplane a month.

And so some of these claims where you say, well, right now I haven't even built one airplanes and then in a few months or in a matter of double digit months, but you know, short amount of time, 12 months, 14 months, you can start building, you know, an airplane a month, two airplane a month. It could be a timeline that is too aggressive to be real.

And the second part, as we were mentioning before, is it doesn't matter what plans the OEM makes, it's whatever the supply chain can support. And that I think it's a very important piece. In general, when it comes to production, we know that at the very beginning, this market is going to be supply limited.

because we will not make a lot of these airplanes and so it's going to take time. And then the last thing that I would say is we need to be careful with looking at plants versus the capacity of a plant. So just because a plant or a building can produce up to a certain number of airplanes, that doesn't mean that that is the capacity that is installed. Like for example, if you look at the

like for a good example, the Taubaté line of EVE in Brazil. It will have the same module that will be repeated multiple times as production scale. But at the start, there's only going to be one module that is different than the full capacity of the entire plant.

Graham, bringing you back in, it's interesting that Sergio just mentioned that initially he expects to see low numbers of aircraft being produced. So I'm wondering, what do you think initial early operations of these aircraft may look like? When do you think we may actually see these things flying around and where will they be and what kinds of flights...

Will they be operated on? Yeah, so I think a good example of what Sergio is talking about is Beta Technologies. The Beta opened its factory, its brand new manufacturing plant, in October 2023. And they rolled out the first aircraft out of that plant was, I think, in November last year.

And that was not a conforming airplane. That was a demonstrator airplane. So Kyle Klatt, the CEO, was talking at AIAA SciTech, and he said, inside that building, they have two lines. They have one line that's making...

conforming aircraft, i.e. every step of the production is documented and approved by the FAA. And he said, basically, they sit there with a file of documents next to the aircraft until the FAA signs it off and it moves to the next stage. So it's moving at a very slow pace because these are FAA-monitored oversight documents.

conforming aircraft the other side of that of the the building they're building demonstrators to the same standard same equipment same pieces even even the subsystems are conformed but they're not going through the fa conformance process because they're demonstrators right so that's the first one off the line there's a few more that can come out of the line and what they've got planned pretty much to do this year now these are conventional takeoff and landing

electric aircraft, but it's the same airframe as their VE VTOL, which is coming along a year or so later.

So their aircraft are going to roll off the line. And they've already got about half a dozen different demonstrations that they've announced. They've got demonstrations in the U.S. with medical delivery with United Therapeutics. They've got Bristow in Norway on cargo, Japan, Dubai. So these aircraft are going to come off the line, and they're going to go off and do these demonstration, customer demonstration flights, right?

And then you go over to Joby, which is the pilot line. And Joby, I don't know, it's about one aircraft every two or three months coming off the pilot line at the moment. And again, what you're seeing is the aircraft are going into demonstrations. They're going to the Air Force to do demos under Agility Prime, or they're going to go to Japan. They've gone to Korea to do demonstrations.

So what this year is going to be about is the one track, which is certification, and the other track, which is customer demonstrations, for which you do not need a certified airplane. You need an airworthiness approval, but it's the experimental airworthiness approval.

So towards the end of the year, it's entirely feasible if the UAE is going to stay on the track that it wants to stay on and launch service, commercial service, you know, early in 2026, early to mid-2026, they may start flying in-country towards the end of this year. But it'll be under a special permit to fly, right?

that allows them to fly non-certified airplanes. They may even get permission to do market survey flights where you can sort of fly typical routes between the reports, do actually show the mission, whether that includes flying passengers or not, I don't really know. But if they do any flying, it will not be commercial for hire passenger carriage. It will be some form of demonstration, some form of a special operation

where there is a specific permit written that allows them to do that type of operation. So we will see a lot of that through this year. And that's generally just across electric aviation. There's a lot of demonstrations that are planned throughout 2025 in electric aviation writ large. So we will see a lot of activity.

But you've got to remember those airplanes are not certified airplanes. Those are airplanes that are built as demonstrators. They may have everything in that airplane is what's planned for the production airplane. It just has not gone through the FAA or the ARSA approval process. They are aircraft specifically designed to go into a pilot operation or a demo or something like that. So that's what we'll see this year.

And then that might phase in, if that sticks to that, we might see it phase into something in the UAE early in the next year. Great. Well, I think we have time for maybe just one more question. I want to let you have the last word, Sergio. With SMG Consulting, Sergio,

issues one or two or several high-level predictions at the end of each year. That was the case also last year. So I'd love to hear, Sergio, maybe one or two of those high-level predictions and what you would expect to see in 2025.

Sure. So it's been a tradition. I think we always go out on a limb and we try and say, you know, what's going to happen this year. I think if we look back at what we said at the beginning of 2024, I think it shows how the industry needs to go through a lot of work to get these airplanes out. And so it's a lot of the things that we predicted last year were kind of like

seeing this hopefully happen this year. I think when it comes to certification, really, as Graham was mentioning, the

The outlier would be Volocopter. It could be. It all depends on the amount of money that they will receive. And I think also Jens made a very good point to say if a new investor comes in, would they want to finish the VoloCity program or say, you know, we should concentrate on the more economical machine that would be this larger aircraft?

We haven't talked about China. I know that we can have an entire podcast on China. It's a fascinating market right now. And there could be some certification, there will be some certification there, as well as some entry into service. And I think that that was like our first prediction. I think what's worth, it's also touching on the, what I call the goodbyes.

of the industry. So we have seen during the course of last year, over air, completely liquidating. And I think we need to be careful now how we refer to these things because companies are going bankrupt, but bankruptcy, it is not a permanent death. It is just going into the ICU that could lead to the morgue, but we're not there yet.

But I think that as we have seen that company fail, we will need to look this year at who we left the wherewithal to continue. And what we have seen last year is that more money is going to the same players because there are those players that are progressing as opposed to the others. And then we have many, many, many other companies that are slowly coming along.

but a lot of money is needed. So one of the things we showed at one of the latest conferences was we looked at 60 different advanced air mobility players and for each one of them we looked at how much money they raised and

forecasted how much money they need to certification. Well, there is a $40 billion gap between where we are now and the money that we need for all of them to certify. And so that means that look for cash as the indicator when it comes to what's going on. Last but not least, to put a bow on it,

I think we will see a lot of airplanes that hopefully will get conforming aircraft, whatever conforming aircraft means, as Graham mentioned, but the

a regulator issuing this TIA, we call it TIA for flight credit. That means, as Graham was mentioning, you have an inspector from the regulator in the airplane with the OEM doing tests. And we think that there will be a few airplanes receiving this TIA across the whole world.

Fascinating stuff, Sergio. Well, I think we're about out of time, but I want to thank all three of our guests, Jens, Graham, and Sergio, for your fantastic insights. That's a wrap for this week's Check 6. A special thanks to our podcast editor in London, Guy Ferneyhough. Thanks for listening, and have a great week.

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