Podcast: How Much Progress Did AAM Make In 2025?

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Jeremy Kariuki (00:10): Hello and welcome to the BCA podcast by Aviation Week Network. I'm your host, Jeremy Kariuki, and today we're going to be talking about advanced air mobility, how it's been, where we're at and where we're going. And to do just that, I'm joined by my two colleagues, Ben Goldstein and Graham Warwick. Two people that know this way better than I do or most people, but guys, welcome to the show. Let's start with you, Ben. What highlights from 2024 have been the most notable for you in covering the AAM industry?

Ben Goldstein (00:41): Yeah, well, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. I think we started off the year with a notable failure: Lilium, and of course that company sort of went up in flames. There was a couple of failed rescue attempts and ultimately a lot of investor dollars were burned. And that was a theme that we did see play out. Volocopter did not fail, but the company got sold essentially for pennies on the dollar to a Chinese company, Wanfeng Diamond. And we've seen program pauses from Textron, Airbus, and Supernal has sort of reorganized or scrapped their aircraft and they're starting over again. So in that sense, we saw some of the consolidation I think we were expecting, and on the other hand we see some positive signs. We see Joby with their first quote unquote TIA ready aircraft that's been powered on. This is the type design conforming aircraft that they hope to fly next year for their type inspection authorization flight test campaign with the FAA.

(01:52): I think that's a really positive sign. And we see others like Vertical Aerospace, which are progressing along, expanding the flight envelope with their prototype. Archer's been flying in CTOL mode with their Midnight prototype, although we truthfully don't have a whole lot of visibility into what's been going on behind the scenes at Archer lately and Eve is looking ahead to a first flight hopefully in the coming weeks or early next year. I know they've been saying a first flight's coming for a long time, but this time we hope it's the real deal. So it has been a mixed bag, but I think all in all we do see positive progress being made. And of course, I forgot to mention Beta Technologies, but Graham's been talking to Kyle Clark, so I think he can elaborate a bit more on them.

Graham Warwick (02:39): Yeah, so I think for me, one of the interesting things of 2024 was it was really the year of demonstration, right? Kind of showing what these aircraft can do. It's been a long time saying that people saying, if you want investment, if you want public buy-in, if you want government buy-in, we need to see what these things can do. So we did start to see some of that this year. Some of the little things like Joby did its first airport to airport flight and it flew into not a huge airport, but a fairly busy airport. So it had to mix with all of the normal traffic, it had to hold while an airliner landed, et cetera, and all that sort of stuff that they need to show they can do if they're going to go off and do a reliable air taxi service. So that was a little thing, a bigger thing.

(03:28): Beta flew the first passengers in an electric aircraft into a major U.S. airport, John F. Kennedy. Now that was their conventional takeoff and landing airplane, not their vertical takeoff, but it was still quite a big step of sending electric aircraft into what is a really busy airport. And then we saw Beta itself went off and did a tour in Europe, Ireland, the U.K., on mainland Europe, and then they're now in Norway doing a cargo demonstration with Bristow. This is real world, but doing the same thing down in New Zealand with Air New Zealand where they're flying an eVTOL aircraft getting some experience.

(04:12): So we did see these kind of milestones. We've mentioned Beta. I mean we've had a year where electric aircraft industry has been taking a bit of a beating in the financing. Finding funding has been difficult. And then Beta did a billion dollar IPO, which was quite extraordinary, beat their expectations. And one of the reasons is that Beta has this stepwise approach. They want to certify their conventional takeoff aircraft to Part 23 standard general aviation rules before they certify their eVTOL. They're also going to start selling that aircraft as soon as it's certified so they get revenues, whereas people like Joby and Archer don't get revenues till they start flying passengers. So we did see some good progress during the year.

Jeremy Kariuki (05:01): All right. And it seems as though there's, when we're bringing back to looking today, we're right after the Dubai Airshow. Of course AAM is a huge thing in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and there's a lot of motion going on there. Could you speak more to that?

Graham Warwick (05:15): So I'll start off with that. I mean, we were expecting it, right? Because we've known what's been going on. Archer and Beta have been testing in the UAE under quite longstanding agreements aimed at starting commercial service in Abu Dhabi and Dubai maybe next year. We don't know if that's a possibility or not, but there's a lot of work going on, and that was compounded by the show. There were lots of announcements, but it wasn't just Joby and Archer. The Chinese were very present there and they're moving fast and they have airplanes that are heading towards certification next year. It may be a race between the U.S. and China to certify these passenger carrying eVTOLs first. So the Chinese were there, some of the other, SkyDrive did an agreement. It's a very active region and I think given your audience, one of the really interesting things is we've said all along that business aviation, particularly fixed base operators, are kind of the starting point for advanced air mobility because you have to fly from somewhere to somewhere.

(06:24): So if you're going to fly into an airport, you're not going to on day one go build a vertiport on top of the terminal. It's just too much money and too much risk. You are going to fly into the FBO that's already there on the airport and then maybe limo it across the terminal or whatever, or get from your business jet to downtown by jumping on an eVTOL at the FBO. So Dubai underlined that because there were a bunch of agreements that are around both in UAE and Saudi Arabia where that existing FBO infrastructure, which is pretty high end in that part of the world, is very definitely the starting point.

Ben Goldstein (07:03): Yeah, I think Dubai, once again, I would also describe it as slightly a mixed bag. I think the big highlight was that Joby did conduct a series of, I think it was five public demonstrations, which is really great. I mean, Joby was the first eVTOL aircraft to ever fly in Dubai. So that is a bit of a milestone. I mean, it is worth saying though, that Archer had promised they would fly in Dubai and ultimately they were unable to fly. And I think that kind of papered over a bit.

Graham Warwick (07:35): So Joby flew transitioned and everything like that piloted, it's a very different thing if you're asking the regulator to approve you to fly a 7,000 pound uncrewed aircraft at an air show. So maybe Archer was a little optimistic that they'd get approval, but the fact that it didn't fly may not be any reflection on the aircraft, simply just the regulator said, you're too big and heavy for remotely piloted. But I have to say that you should have known that. You should be careful what you promise about these things because in the end, the regulator calls the shots and that's just what everything about the UAE is about. In the end, the regulator has to say yes to what all these guys are saying.

Ben Goldstein (08:19): Yeah, I think that's a major theme that we've seen is there's been a kind of recognition that maybe some of the companies have overpromised, and it might just be a case that they've been too aggressive with what they've promised and they're still making good progress. But a year ago we were talking about actually launching commercial service in the UAE around this time, and of course that's not happened and it hasn't even really come close to happening. I mean, looking now, Joby will be the first to get TIA and that will be sometime in 2026. We don't know when. It could be three months or six months, maybe nine months. But regardless, I think if you sort of track out how that will play out, we're seeing a situation where at the earliest Joby can certify maybe in the middle of 2027. And it's hard to say once again exactly where Archer is, if they can catch up quickly or not. But they would be presumably in 2028 or afterwards. And it's worth noting that not long ago we were talking about 2024 in Dubai or 2025, and I think that's the theme that we see is that these timelines are just longer than we thought and that maybe it would be wiser, I think for companies not to set these arbitrary dates anymore when those targets come and go and they're missed. I think they take a black eye when otherwise maybe they wouldn't have.

Graham Warwick (09:50): Yeah, it's interesting, funnily enough, when I forget exactly when it was, but the FAA announced the, what was it called? I-28? I forget what the I stood for.

Ben Goldstein (09:58): Innovate 28. Yeah.

Graham Warwick (10:00): Innovate 28, right. And there was a bit of, at that particular time, we were all expecting commercial service to start in 2025. It says, oh no, the FAA has set 2028. It can all slow down now. Well, here we are and Innovate 2028 looks kind of aggressive at the moment and flying at the LA Olympics, which is a core piece of what Innovate 28 was supposed to be about looks, it may be doable, but it's not going to be easily doable. But one other sort of positive thing we think that happened this year was this, what they call it EIPP, which is eVTOL Integration Pilot Program. And one of the things that people have been sort of calling for is for the government to step up and do a bit more to help the industry. If you look at China, there's massive central party government downwards support for what they call the low altitude economy we call advanced air mobility, but it was absent in the U.S.

(10:59): Well, we had the White House Drone Dominance executive order, and out of that was this thing called the EIPP. We still don't really know what that's going to look like, but it's going to be operational demonstrations of eVTOLs and drones and other things as well.

So we might actually see the first signs of what advanced air mobility will look like under the EIPP, and the idea is to generate data for the FAA to guide its regulation. So the more data the FAA gets, the faster, theoretically the FAA can move to approve not just the aircraft, but the operations that these aircraft are going to do. And we forget certification is one step, but you've still got to get that aircraft into service and get all of the approvals to fly it, train the pilots, fly the aircraft. And so there's some sense that maybe the EIPP will give this a little bit of momentum that it needs to get that thing rolling with a bit more speed than might happen otherwise. So we'll see.

Ben Goldstein (12:05): Right. And EIPP is supposed to kick off in the middle of 2026. There's going to be, I believe it's five pilot projects related to passenger air taxi, cargo logistics. They're doing a fixed wing, a regional air mobility type project. So in these projects, they're public-private. The federal government's not spending money, but it's going to be state and local governments partnering with the OEMs. So those applications are being submitted. Now I know Joby, Beta, Archer and even Wisk want to participate. So it should be a really exciting moment for the industry.

Graham Warwick (12:44): And it's more than just eVTOL as Ben says. So Electra with its electric, hybrid electric STOL aircraft. I'm sure they're looking at it. We know it mentions autonomous aircraft. So you can imagine that Reliable Robotics and the others have taken the Caravan and turned it into an autonomous cargo aircraft or that's the idea. That's the sort of thing that there's probably going to be one demonstration, it's going to be around that sort of autonomy at a significant size airplane. So it's going to be interesting. And I do think it's what the industry needs to keep the momentum going because next year's going to get bogged down in the doing of the work, and I think to keep the momentum up, we're going to need some of these demonstrations to fire up people's imaginations and get the stakeholders to realize what this can do for them.

Ben Goldstein (13:40): Fortunately, the major companies, at least Archer, Beta and Joby, have the financial wherewithal where they can keep going for a while, they've raised billions of dollars. Vertical Aerospace has struggled even though they've been making I think, solid technical progress. But they're pretty optimistic that given some of that progress on flight testing, they're going to be able to attract an industrial partner in 2026, somebody to help them get the financial runway to certification.

Graham Warwick (14:09): I mean, these companies have got the top three, at least have got money runway through almost to the end of the decade. So they don't want to have to wait that long for the money to start coming back in the door. But it's unlike you covered business aviation. You see business aviation, a startup comes into business aviation and they almost always run out of money during development or maybe they like Eclipse, they get certification and they run out of money in the early stages of production, these are all well capitalized companies. So if things may not go as quickly as they want, but they do have some buffer in the bank to give them a chance and we're closer than we've ever been. We may be on this podcast a year from now saying the same things, but we are closer than we were this time last year.

Ben Goldstein (15:07): Yeah, I mentioned earlier that Richard Aboulafia had a funny line, I think it was about 18 months ago. He was asked, when will we see eVTOLs? And he says, well, every year we say 18 to 20 months from now in the UAE. And fast forward almost two years and we're saying the same exact thing. So it is funny. It might also be worth mentioning though, that it's going to take a long time for these to be profitable companies launching these air taxi services. I think that's something a lot of people have come around to realize. But sort of in part recognition of that, we've seen almost all of the major companies pivot to hybrid and talking about the defense market. We see Archer partnering with Anduril and now they're supplying their electric motors to a UAV called Roadrunner trying to get a revenue stream there. We see Joby flying, really exciting, flying their autonomous hybrid aircraft for the first time. And even Vertical Aerospace is testing their hybrid powertrain on the ground and they're hoping to get it in a flying aircraft by mid-2026. Beta, of course, is also doing this. So that's another exciting opportunity where even if air taxi might take longer than we hoped for, we can hopefully get revenues coming in from the defense side sooner.

Jeremy Kariuki (16:27): Absolutely. Yeah. So we're almost out of time now, but I would love to ask both of you a two-part question as we look forward into 2026. Number one, what milestones are you hoping to see in the industry next year? And number two, what milestones are you expecting?

Ben Goldstein (16:47): Tough question. Predictions are tough to make and I'm sure we're going to get them wrong. But I would say what I would hope to and expect to see would be Joby to get their type inspection authorization, hopefully sometime in the first half of next year, and they can actually begin doing their certification flight testing, which is something we'd hope to see because up to now it's been company flight testing, not for credit. I would hope to see Archer transition with their Midnight, and if there have been any technical issues, I would hope that those get solved and that Archer can sort of maybe make up for some lost time, if there was any this year. I would hope to see Eve flying and not just talking about flying. And I'd like to see Vertical Aerospace continue with their great progress. I don't think we're going to see anyone certify obviously, but in China we might see a few players certify, whether it's EHang or AutoFlight. So I think we're going to see these current trends kind of continuing forward.

Graham Warwick (17:53): Yeah, I mean those are very much the same things I would've said. If you kept me strictly to two, I'd say, or strictly to the way you framed your question, I'd say what I'd like to see is certification. What I expect to see is the start of for-credit certification testing, maybe even TIA testing, which means that we are on the final path to certification. So I'd like to be on that final path to certification even if it doesn't happen in 2026. And that for the other ones that Ben mentions. I do think that when we follow the financial analysts' view of the eVTOL manufacturers, I do think Vertical gets treated really unfairly. They are making technical, good technical progress, fingers crossed, touch wood, all the other things you have to do when you make a statement like that. But they have made good technical progress.

(18:51): They do have a good concept for the product, right? They are not viewed the same way as the U.S. companies, and that's partly because it's a UK company, partly because the investment climate is different in the U.K., partly because of the company's sort of history. But they have a good strategy. They appear to have a good product. They are making technical progress. I just wish that we would get to the end of next year, and they're treated in some more equal way with the others because they are one of the handful that are making progress. And that should be recognized.

Ben Goldstein (19:29): And maybe we should just add, not eVTOL, but eCTOL, that we're hopeful that Beta Technologies can certify their CX-300 sometime next year. It's looking like they'll certify their motor early next year. And it would be good to see, even if we can't get a certified eVTOL, it would be great for the industry to see Beta certify that and begin selling some aircraft.

Jeremy Kariuki (19:54): Yep. Good point. All right, well we can only wait and see, I guess. So thanks again both of you, Ben, Graham for coming on. This has been an excellent conversation. I'm really looking forward to what happens in the industry next year. And thank you for listening to the BCA podcast by Aviation Week Network. This episode was produced by Jeremy Kariuki and Guy Ferneyhough. Anyhow, if you enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe or follow us on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to support us, please leave a rating wherever you listen. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.