In an important moment for the company and the entire electric VTOL industry, Joby Aviation has officially begun manned flight testing of its S4eVTOL air taxi. Joby announced the milestone via a video and led the US team to begin the certification competition.
Since full testing began in 2017, Joby has flown thousands of miles under remote control, including record-breaking eVTOL speed and distance test flights, and now Joby is starting to put humans on board. Four test pilots have already begun flying the cutting-edge aircraft.
This achievement is a groundbreaking step. Many people have flown eVTOLs over the years, dating back to 2011 with Volocopter’s famous flying yoga ball. But it's one thing to strap yourself into a large drone and risk it, and it's quite another for a major company seeking FAA certification to risk the lives of its employees flying a brand-new aircraft.
Some other leading contenders in commercial advanced air mobility have been flying crewed missions for some time, notably Volocopter, eHang and Beta Technologies. However, both Volocopter and eHang fly simple multi-rotor aircraft for manned flights, which are far less complex than Joby's vector thrust aircraft, which has six large tilting propellers and cruising wings.
Beta may also have its own flying-wing aircraft, the Alia, which is a simpler lift-cruise design with independent vertical and horizontal propulsion systems, but so far its manned flights have been conducted without VTOL systems, using runways for conventional takeoffs and landings. So Joby's decision to go on a manned flight was a big deal and a historic moment.
The test flight was short, close to the ground, and initially controlled within fairly tight limits, including "free-thrust hover and forward transition to half-thrust flight." So while it hasn't fully transitioned to flying-wing cruise mode yet, the aircraft has proven itself capable in this regard.
"I have helped design and test flight controls for a variety of aircraft, including all three variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and nothing compares to the simplicity and elegance of the Joby aircraft," said Joby chief test pilot James "Buddy" Denham. "After completing more than 400 vertical takeoffs and landings on the ground, it is a privilege to sit in the cockpit of our aircraft and experience first-hand the simplicity and intuitiveness of the designs developed by the Joby team."
These eVTOLs are fully fly-by-wire, using advanced flight control systems and numerous sensors to distribute power among multiple propellers and manage transitions between VTOL and cruise flight modes. But the end result couldn't be more user-friendly; they're a piece of cake to fly and much easier to operate than an airplane, let alone a helicopter.