Joby receives FAA authorisation for air taxi operating system

Joby Aviation, developing electric air taxis for commercial passenger service, has received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorisation to use a suite of software tools developed in-house, called ‘ElevateOS’, designed to enable high-tempo, on-demand air taxi operations.

The ElevateOS operating system includes pilot tools, operations and schedule management software, a mobile-first rider app and an intelligent matching engine. The matching engine is similar to those used by ride-hailing apps today, pairing passengers with available aircraft and landing infrastructure to deliver journeys as efficiently as possible. Joby plans to use ElevateOS to support its own air taxi operations and make it available to selected partners who purchase the aircraft as part of a wider services package. 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 in New York City, using traditional helicopters bookable via the Uber app.

“The air taxi service we plan to deliver isn’t like any sort of air travel that’s existed before. We expect travellers to book on-demand and to be boarding an aircraft just minutes later, much like the experience of using ground-based ridesharing today. That required us to totally rethink the software and the operations of these aircraft,” said Eric Allison, Chief Product Officer at Joby and former Head of Uber Elevate. “We’ve built ElevateOS from the ground up to enable high-tempo, on-demand flights that will deliver true time savings and seamless mobility to customers.”

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. Joby intends to operate its aircraft in U.S. markets including New York City and Los Angeles alongside partner Delta Air Lines, and in the United Arab Emirates, where the company has a six-year exclusive agreement to provide air taxi services in Dubai. Joby will also partner with local operators in certain overseas geographies, as well as supporting direct sales of its aircraft to business customers such as Mukamalah, the aviation arm of Saudi Aramco and to potential government partners such as the U.S. Department of Defense.