Advanced air mobility is moving into a more demanding phase in the United States, with the focus shifting from experimental flights to the practical work of integrating new aircraft into everyday operations.
Speaking during JobsOhio’s Farnborough International Airshow panel, the US Federal Aviation Administration said its eVTOL integration pilot programme had selected eight partners covering 26 states. The aim, according to the FAA representative, is to understand how the aircraft perform in real-world conditions and gather the data required to create a national framework capable of supporting operations at scale.
The programme is intended to go beyond isolated demonstrations. The FAA wants to examine aircraft operating within real corridors and determine how the wider ecosystem functions when airports, vertiports and air traffic control are brought together.
“We’re building a system that lives in the existing regulatory frame but brings entirely novel operating capabilities. We think that’s where the legacy of safety and all of the insight that has come out of 100 years of operation meets a whole new world of capability,” said Mark Allen, Electra.
The agency’s stated priority remains safety, with type certification identified as a prerequisite for commercial operations. The FAA representative said the regulator is working with manufacturers to understand how their aircraft and systems are being developed, while using available data to determine where regulatory resources should be concentrated. Companies ready to demonstrate their aircraft through the pilot programme could therefore help the FAA capture evidence and apply it to the wider integration process.
Mark Allen of Electra said his company had taken an incremental approach, using the existing Part 23 regulatory framework while introducing new technologies. Allen said Electra began working with the FAA’s emerging technology division in 2020, submitted a formal application for type certification in November 2025 and reached what the transcript records as “formal G1 concurrence” around seven months later. He added that the programme was approximately four weeks behind schedule.
The panel also highlighted the difficulty of measuring certification progress across different manufacturers. SMG Consulting’s representative said there was no single established metric for comparing certification timelines because each aircraft and programme is different. He argued that a more meaningful late-stage indicator would be the point at which the FAA begins participating in or directly witnessing aircraft tests.
The FAA said successful pilot-programme proposals were supported by broader ecosystems involving manufacturers, operators, federal agencies, state and local governments, communities and third-party providers. The eight selected partnerships were considered capable of demonstrating not only the aircraft but also the conditions required for operations to scale. The current programme was described as a first tranche that could expand. For states seeking future participation, the FAA’s advice was to assemble a complete operating ecosystem and demonstrate how it could generate usable data for a national regulatory framework.
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Author: Anastasiya Simsek
