• 20 Mar 2025 10:39 PM
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TVF 2025 Highlights AAM Progress and Challenges — Part 3: Electric VTOL Leaders

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 and Part 2: AAM Perspectives.

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. 

The leaders of the US eVTOL industry will well-represented at TFV 2025, as well as leading companies from Brazil and Japan.

Archer Aviation

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).

As one of the leaders in the eVTOL industry, Archer Aviation achieved numerous milestones in 2024, including a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Southwest Airlines to utilize Archer’s eVTOL aircraft at California airports, said company chief operating officer (COO) Tom Anderson.

More recently, Archer has started operating a Bell 206B helicopter and Beech Bonanza airplane in the San Francisco Bay area under its Part 135 certificate flown by an experienced air ambulance pilot and a Boeing 787 pilot to gather data in support of future operations. One of the insights of flying the 24-mile (39-km) route between the nearby San Carlos and San Jose airports is there can be up to five interactions with air traffic control (ATC) in the low-altitude airspace.

Anderson said one of the challenges of the SFAR is that it specifies the use of Level C full-flight simulators (FFS) for single-pilot eVTOL aircraft but provides little detail regarding how to get such a simulator qualified. Major airlines using a Level C FFS often have fleets of 200 aircraft to support the simulator, but the cost of such a device will be very expensive for pre-revenue companies like Archer building eVTOL aircraft with four revenue-generating seats.

Archer is looking to the UAE, and particularly Abu Dhabi, to be one of its first civil eVTOL markets, said Anderson, adding that the region is showing tremendous enthusiasm for new technology and Archer expects the operating regulations will be more closely aligned with the US. 

Archer is also seeing strong demand in the defense market, which helped its raise an addition $730M in December 2024 and February 2025, with the company now working with Anduril Industries, Inc. on next-generation hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft for defense applications.

Beta Technologies 

Since its launch in 2017, Beta Technologies has grown to 750 employees, headquartered in Burlington, Vermont, with offices in New York, Washington, Ohio, South Carolina and Montreal.

The company is developing the dual-pilot seat A250 eCTOL and the CX300 eVTOL, which will be certified (respectively) under FAA Part 23 and Part 21.17(b) “special class” powered-lift airworthiness requirements, with the eVTOL having 75% commonality with the eCTOL, said Kristen Costello, Regulatory Affairs Lead at Beta Technologies.

Costello explained that because Beta’s aircraft have dual controls, it can take the traditional FAR Part 61 approach to certifying pilots and flight instructors to become powered-lift pilots, and not require an alternate pathway. 

All applicants are required to have 50 hours on a powered-lift aircraft.  The benefits of having an aircraft with dual controls means PIC training time can be reduced from 50 to 35 hours in conjunction with the use of flight training device (FTD) for up to 15 hours of credible time. This means Beta is not required to use a more costly FFS to clear pilots to go solo. 

Costello said the pilot training process for the A250 is similar to any instruction a Part 135 air taxi would require for a new high-performance Part 23 aircraft, which means pilots with their commercial license will only need a weeklong training course plus a checkout ride, adding that Beta is designing a training curriculum to add the powered lift/vertical lift type rating to existing commercial certificates.

The first three stages of Beta’s standard training syllabus for its eCTOL and eVTOL are the same, with the eVTOL-specific training building on pilot proficiency in the eCTOL aircraft, leading to a powered-lift type rating. 

Beta has now established 46 charging sites in the US and another 20 are in the permit or construction phase. 

Beta sees market opportunities in the medical, cargo, passenger and military markets with more than 550 aircraft ordered by eight customers who have all placed deposits on their firm orders, said Costello. 

Beta has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Bristow Group subsidiary Bristow Norway AS to demonstrate A250 cargo transport in Norway during the second half of 2025. 

In April 2024, Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Avinor, a state-owned company which owns 44 airports, announced they would establish an international test arena for zero- and low-emission aircraft. It’s expected that some of the flights will fly the 86 nm (160 km) route between Bergen (ENBR) and Stavanger (ENZV), which are both bases for Bristow helicopters serving offshore oil and gas platforms.

Beta has also been chosen as Air New Zealand’s Next Gen Aircraft partner with A250 cargo flights planned over several routes in the island nation, followed by passenger commercial demonstrations (see “eVTOL Leaders Go Global,” Vertiflite, Jan/Feb 2025).

Eve Air Mobility

Tiago Gomes, Head of Aeronautics at Eve Air Mobility, provided attendees with an update on the eVTOL program. Eve has been underway since 2017; the company began within Embraer-X, Embraer's business accelerator arm, before it was spun off as an independent but affiliated company in 2020. Eve maintains its access to Embraer’s intellectual property under a royalty-free 15-year agreement.

Today, Eve is a three-product company, with its eVTOL aircraft, Vector Urban Air Traffic Management (Urban ATM) software systems, and its services and operations technical support business. The company says that it has the most orders in the industry for its eVTOL aircraft, with nearly 3,000 conditional orders and options. 

In the week prior to TFV 2025, Eve Air Mobility announced that it had started running the electric pusher propeller of its Eve-100 lift+cruise eVTOL design at a remote taxiway at its Gavião Peixoto facility in Brazil.

This year, Eve will commence the detailed design phase for the aircraft, with the verification phase to begin in 2026; type certification and EIS are both expected in 2027, Gomes said. Eve has partnered with at least 20 companies to be key technology suppliers for the aircraft, which is undergoing numerous rig tests of the propeller, lift propellers, motor and flight controls.

The aircraft is designed to carry a pilot and four passengers — or up to six passengers in a planned autonomous configuration. It is designed to use “battery cells known today” said Gomes, adding that BAE Systems is Eve’s battery supplier.

Joby Aviation

Several years ago, Joby Aviation announced it would be utilizing “unified flight controls” in its S4 tilt-propeller eVTOL, building on the research experience on an experimental BAE Systems Harrier in the UK that led to the adaption of the technology on the F-35B short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) fighter. Unified flight controls are designed to simplify the transition between hover and forward flight (and back) by providing a single set of controls that can be used for all maneuvers.

Ryan Naru, Aviation Policy & Regulatory Affairs Lead, for Joby explained that the minimum prerequisites for entering Joby S4 pilot training include a private pilot license in a fixed-wing aircraft, an instrument rating and commercial license, a minimum of 500 hours and the right aptitude to become a S4 pilot.

Graduates from a Part 141 flight school will probably build time as a certified flight instructor (CFI) and take an urban air mobility (UAM) transition course when they have between 200 and 500 hours prior to beginning Joby S4-specific flight training.  

Since Joby’s unified flight controls use fixed-wing control inceptors (stick and throttle vs. cyclic and collective), Naru explained that Joby will favor airplane pilots for training, with his slides stating that “it is easy to take airplane pilots and slow them down to the hover” and “it is much more difficult to take rotorcraft pilots and train alternative control inputs and responses.” 

Joby will not exclude rotorcraft pilots from its training pipeline, but believes “more study is necessary to quantify required exposure to become fluent in unified hover,” and “cognitive failures (reversion to type) must be better understood to support training pilots that only have rotorcraft experience.” 

This means that for most of Joby’s early cadre of pilots, the first time they hover will be in the S4. 

The training path with include a demonstration flight in an S4 before a series of simulator modules, a pre-solo check in a simulator, a solo flight and further simulator knowledge to confirm knowledge and skills. 

Meanwhile, Naru stated, Joby has been refining its concept of operations and conducting flight tests to measure the S4 outwash and downwash to determine the risks to people and property in the vicinity of aircraft operations.

Wisk

The Wisk Generation 6 is being developed to be the first FAA-certified commercial autonomous passenger aircraft, said Erick Corona, the company’s Director Airspace Operational Integration. 

Since its founding as Zee Aero in 2010, Wisk has grown as a company to about 800 employees based at sites in the US, Canada, Poland, Australia and New Zealand. Wisk has accomplished more than 1,750 test flight to date with its first five full-scale aircraft models. 

The four-passenger Generation 6 is being designed for autonomous flight with human oversight. The aircraft has a 50-ft (15-m) wingspan, a cruise speed of 110–120 kt (204–222 km/h), range of 78 nm (145 km) with reserves, a charge time of 15 minutes, and the ability to accommodate carry-on and personal baggage.

The operational goal is to enable the integration of remotely supervised urban air mobility under IFR operations. 
 

To be continued ... in Part 4: Propulsion System Developments (coming March 24)