• 19 Mar 2025 04:42 PM
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TVF 2025 Highlights AAM Progress and Challenges — Part 2: AAM Perspectives

By Kenneth I. Swartz

This series is an expanded version of the article printed in the March/April 2025 issue of Vertiflite. Check out Part 1: Introduction.

The Vertical Flight Society’s TVF 2025 was held at Phoenix Convention Center on Feb. 4–6, 2025, including the 12th Electric VTOL symposium and the 11th Biennial Autonomous VTOL Technical Meeting.

AAM Perspectives

Tom Perkowski, Founding Principal at Apex View, moderated the annual AAM Perspectives Session. The above photos shows (L-R) Perkowski with Willi Tacke, Sergio Cecutta, Elan Head and James Wang. 

Making his annual TVF appearance, Dr. Sergio Cecutta of SMG Consulting said that all of the Western eVTOL companies missed their certification targets in 2024, but he expects to see the entry into service (EIS) of one or more eVTOL aircraft in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2026, followed by the EIS of the first aircraft the US in 2027.

A few years ago, the UAE was rarely mentioned as a launch market for AAM operations, but this may well be where some of the first commercial piloted eVTOL passenger and cargo services occur. 

He believes only four eVTOL companies (Archer, Joby, Beta and Eve) have the sufficient progress and funds to achieve type certification and entry into service today, with the companies without sufficient remaining funds including Volocopter, Lilium and Vertical, as well as essentially every other western OEM (see “eVTOL Leaders Separate from the Pack,” pg. 52).

The picture is very different in China, where it costs “seven times less to make an aircraft” and governments have announced almost $13B in financial and non-momentary support to the country’s “low altitude economy” (LAE).

AAM has inspired tremendous technological innovation, but Cecutta reminded the audience that funding gap is still very large and “we are going to need a lot more money.”

He said that the top 60 AAM OEMs have raised about $13B but would need a total of more than $50B more to push all their aircraft designs across the Type Certification finish line. Of this overall AAM leaders segment, the top eVTOL OEMs have raised more than $10B of the funds raised but will require nearly $30B more to certify all their designs.

During the past year, Overair, Airbus and others have shut down their eVTOL programs, but the number of vertiport operators with existing infrastructure is expected to more than double in 2025.

Willi Tacke, CEO of Flying Pages GmbH, has been a regular presenter at the VFS Electric VTOL Symposiums and Electric Aircraft Symposiums for many years, and hosts the e-flight-expo at AERO Friedrichshafen and the e-flight-forum in China every year.  

A passionate aviation publisher, writer and pilot, Tacke was probably the only participant at TVF 2025 who has piloted both an electric conventional takeoff and landing (eCTOL) aircraft (2009) and eVTOL aircraft, namely the Pivotal Helix, which he flew in Byron, California, last summer. 

In Europe, Tacke said the first eTrainers are “on the way” with aircraft in development or entering service in the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Ultralight, CS-23 and CS-LSA categories, and a series of eCTOL aircraft closely following. MD Aircraft of Germany, for example, is stepping up development of its nine-seat MDA1, which will initially have a battery-electric propulsion system, with plans for hydrogen fuel cells in the future. 

New European projects include NEX Aero, which is flying a 25%-scale lift+cruise eVTOL with a hydrogen fuel cell; ERC, which is developing a prototype of its medevac lift+cruise eVTOL; and Zuri, which is developing a full-scale prototype of its hybrid-electric tilt-propeller aircraft.

Just prior to TVF 2025, Safran obtained EASA certification of its ENGIeUS 100 electric motor and Tacke says the eVTOL supply chain is expanding in Europe with the contribution of MGM Compro, Bosch GA and software specialists ITKMotor. 

German hydrogen-electric projects are also progressing with Joby-owned H2FLY has flying its HY4 test aircraft with liquid hydrogen since 2023, HYFLY test-flying its Dornier DS-2C amphibian with a fuel cell, and Apus expects to fly its four-seat hydro-electric general aviation aircraft this year. 

At the same time, the list of market exits has grown, with Tecnam canceling its P-Volt in 2023, Airbus ending its CityAirbus demonstrations later this year, Rolls-Royce Electrical shutting down last year, and both Volocopter and Lilium filing for insolvency late last year.

Elan Head, senior editor of The Air Current, began her presentation by contrasting the civic response in Paris and New York City to recent vertiport developments. 

Last summer, the Council of Paris objected to the establishment of a floating vertiport on a barge in the Seine that was to be used for Volocopter flight demonstrations during the 2024 Summer Olympics. Yet in New York, there was broad support from elected officials and community groups to the award of a new operating contract for the Manhattan Downtown Heliport (JRB) that would install charging infrastructure and incentivize the use of eVTOLs at the facility after witnessing flights by Volocopter and Joby at the facility in November 2023.

Head said that one key difference was that “helicopters are not currently conducting tour and charter flights from barges in the Seine. But they are from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport and creating a lot of noise in the process. eVTOLs will encounter less resistance where they have the potential to solve an existing problem.”

Head spoke with representatives from the Stop the Chop NY/NJ advocacy group who witnessed eVTOL demos at JRB in November 2023 who saw the potential for quiet eVTOL aircraft replacing noisy helicopters — provided, however, that the flight “caps are not lifted and hours not increased.” Head said that early narratives that air taxis will make hundreds of flights a day, which “helped attract investors, are now liabilities as eVTOLs get closer to commercial deployment.” Most eVTOL operations, at least in the beginning, will resemble that of helicopter operations. She emphasized that it’s “important for eVTOL developers and operators to engage with communities and actually listen to their concerns, rather than shaping messaging in an industry echo chamber.”

Dr. James Wang, eVTOL industry pioneer and Director of the eVTOL Research and Innovation Centre at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, believes the first movers in the eVTOL industry, like Archer, Beta and Joby, will reach EIS in the 2027–2028 period. They will be followed by second movers like Eve and Supernal, and third movers that are still trying to get into the business and will be a little more conservative.

Wang believes that there will be relatively little production and service until about 2035 before the industry starts to see exponential growth. The majority of the operations may be in Asia, where there are tremendous problems with road congestion. He expects that about 45% of AAM operations will be in Asia, 30% in the Americas, and about 25% in Europe and the rest of the world.

He believes that the growth in eVTOL range will be a function of an increase in specific energy at the cell level. He also predicts eVTOL operating costs will drop as battery technology improves, and battery life increases in combination with high volume production will reduce the cost of manufacturing aircraft.

New Rules for a New Category of Aircraft

In October 2024, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a final rule for the qualifications and training that instructors and pilots must have to fly aircraft in the powered-lift category. This Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) for Powered-Lift provided a lot of clarity and some challenges for eVTOL OEMs and future operators (see “Washington Report,” Vertiflite, Jan/Feb 2025). The “Integration of Powered-Lift: Pilot Certification and Operations; Miscellaneous Amendments Related to Rotorcraft and Airplanes,” came into effect on Jan. 21, 2025 – two weeks before TVF 2025. 

Powered-lift is the first new category of civil aircraft since the 1940s, and the SFAR underwent numerous amendments in response to comments from key stakeholders, including VFS (see www.vtol.org/sfar).

“To safely integrate powered-lift into the NAS [National Air Space], the FAA is making permanent changes to parts 61, 135, and 142 to train and certificate powered-lift pilots and instructors, as well as issuing a temporary SFAR that supplements existing rules, creates temporary alternatives for airman certification, removes operational barriers, and mitigates safety risks for powered-lift,” the Executive Summary said. The rule will require all powered-lift pilots in command (PICs) to hold a type rating for each powered-lift aircraft they will fly. And to obtain a powered-lift category rating, “an applicant must complete set hours of flight time and flight training in the category of aircraft.”

One of the hurdles the SFAR was designed to overcome is how to train and certificate powered-lift instructors and pilots in powered-lift where the aircraft only has a single set of controls. A key outcome was the creation of three alternate pathways to qualify pilots on the single control aircraft. 

The first pathway is where the single set of controls is accessible to both the student and flight instructor (e.g., a throwover control) and the instructor can immediately intervene to take control if necessary.

The second pathway allows all flight training to be conducted in an approved simulator, culminating in solo aeronautical experience in a powered-lift aircraft with a single set of flight controls (subject to certain conditions and limitations). This pathway requires the use of a Level C or higher full flight simulator (FFS).

“Finally, the third pathway permits the FAA to issue deviation authority to facilitate flight training in a powered-lift with a single set of flight controls in the NAS based on future demonstrated and validated advancements in technology,” said the SFAR, which could open the door to the use of less expensive flight training devices (FTD) and other technologies for future training. “Most of the alternative requirements would be available only to pilots who already hold a commercial pilot certificate and an instrument rating for another category of aircraft,” the SFAR stated. 

The requirement for additional flying experience — including an instrument flight rules (IFR) rating — and an approved training program was introduced by the FAA to mitigate the risks on training to fly an aircraft with a single set of controls. 

The FAA also initially proposed using the IFR fuel requirements specified for airplanes for operations conducted under parts 91 and 135, but the SFAR was changed to permit the use of helicopter minimums for powered-lift that are authorized to conduct Copter Procedures, which is defined in part 97, and means they are “continuously capable of conducting a landing in the vertical-lift flight mode along the entire route of flight.”

To be continued ... in Part 3: Electric VTOL Developments (coming March 20!)