Joby will launch UK Air Taxi Service with Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Atlantic announced a partnership with Joby aviation based in California To launch an air taxi service in the United Kingdom, becoming the last airline to bet on a new class of electric aircraft in the running to become taxis in the sky.
Joby’s all electric plane has six rotors and five seats, including the pilot. The vehicle can take off vertically, such as a helicopter, then move in a flight forward using tiltable rotors. Joby says that he can reach a top speed of 200 MPH, travel 150 miles on a single battery load and is 100 times quieter than a conventional plane.
As part of the partnership, customers will be able to book a headquarters in one of the multi-rotors aircraft in Joby via the website and the Virgin Atlantic application. Vehicles will be co-marked with Joby and Virgin Atlantic Logos. But British service will have to wait Until Joby acquired type certificationThis means that the plane meets all FAA design and safety standards, then launched its service based in the United States.
As part of the partnership, customers will be able to book a headquarters in one of the multi-rotors aircraft in Joby via the website and the Virgin Atlantic application.
Air taxi operators face a number of obstacles before becoming a reality, including safety regulations and airport conceptions. The British Civil Aviation Authority began to examine how airports should be reassessed for air taxi flights, including load and air space.
Joby and Virgin Atlantic are considering 15 -minute flights from Manchester Airport in Leeds, or 8 -minute trips from Heathrow Airport to Canary Wharf. Joby is planning an landing network across the United Kingdom and plans to offer comparable prices to “existing high-end carpooling options at launch”.
Air taxis, sometimes poorly identified by consumer media as “flying cars”, are essentially helicopters without noisy and polluting gas engines (although they certainly have their own single noise profile). In addition to Joby, companies like Aviation archer,, VolcocopterAnd Beta Technologies said they were about to launch services that will eventually progress nationally. But others have trained; The German company Lilium recently declared that two of its subsidiaries were insolvent and could stop operations.
Joby recently said that it had made record progress By finishing four of the five stages required for the sales service of passengers in the United States, and plans to transport its first passengers at the end of this year or at the start of the next one. The company also recently delivered a second plane to the US Air Force as part of a test partnership.
Joby had a boost recently, when Federal Aviation Administration published long -awaited Final regulations For Evtol vehicles which, according to him, will draw the way to the “plane trip of the future”. But he does not know if these rules will come into force, after The FAA ordered a break To allow the Trump administration to see them again. A long examination could stretch the joby calendar beyond the target date of 2025 that it set for a launch of taxi service.
