Advanced Air Mobility

E-commerce giant Amazon said it has received air carrier certification of its Prime Air drone delivery service from the FAA, making it the third U.S. company the agency has approved to deliver packages by drone.

Vertical Aerospace’s new eVTOL concept faces an aggressive development timeline.

As urban air mobility providers start formulating plans for maintenance, MROs are getting their foot in the door by building up electric capabilities.

The FAA seeks to evaluate counter-unmanned aircraft systems and choose airports to host the technology.

British electric aircraft developer Vertical Aerospace has revealed its design for a tiltrotor electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

A startup founded by former SpaceX and Tesla engineers is developing an autonomy platform to convert the Cessna 208 Caravan for unmanned cargo operations.

Shell Oil Co. and drone manufacturer DJI announced a partnership on Aug. 25 to develop new methods for industrial inspections at Shell’s Deer Park Manufacturing Complex in Texas.

The FAA has issued separate notices seeking information from industry on providing counter-unmanned aircraft systems technology for deployment at civilian airports and for testing capacity to determine the risk associated with a large jet engine ingesting a small drone.

Near Earth Autonomy and Kaman Aerospace are developing an advanced autonomy system for Kaman’s 6,000-lb.-payload K-Max external-lift helicopter.

Jaunt Air Mobility plans to introduce an all-electric eVTOL aircraft for advanced air mobility in the next few years. Simon Briceno, who heads advanced air mobility for Jaunt, talks about the program’s development and intended maintenance plans.

Startup test-flying Cessna’s cargo feeder modified for lower-cost unmanned operations.

The sUAS will be available from the General Services Administration, or the military can purchase them using other transaction authority.

Since December, the San Francisco-based company has completed more than 70 autonomous flights from takeoff to landing with the converted Caravan.

FAA receives more than 100 reports of drone sightings by pilots, citizens and police each month—it lists more than 400 in its latest report, for the April-June period.

The FAA says it will continue the work of a soon-to-end pilot effort with local and state governments and industry to introduce drones more regularly into the airspace system.

Development of the high-altitude long-endurance system has been rocky from the start.

Planned flight trials at FAA-designated UAS test sites in New York and Virginia will evaluate remote-identification technologies to track drones from the ground in increasingly complex traffic environments.

UK talks up FlyZero; JAXA’s low-boom breakthrough; EHang air taxi in Austria; VerdeGo runs hybrid; and SkyDrive aims for 2023.

China’s EHang is to launch an urban air mobility trial in Linz, Austria, the first operation of its kind in Europe.

The advanced air mobility market is beginning to differentiate by manufacturer, by mission and by timing.

NASA has awarded New York State’s FAA-designated unmanned aircraft systems test site an $897,000 task order to research automation technology for vertiport operations.

The FAA has awarded $3.29 million in grants to its unmanned aircraft systems center of excellence, a coalition led by Mississippi State University.

Japanese electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing start-up SkyDrive is looking at launching an air taxi service in 2023 in either Osaka or Tokyo, with initial flights over the sea, CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa said in an interview with the Japan Times.

Israeli company Percepto says its Sparrow small unmanned aircraft system for industrial applications now features an integral parachute that meets FAA requirements.

Israeli start-up Gadfin has been selected by multinational energy company Enel Group to demonstrate electrical infrastructure inspection using a fuel-cell-powered long-range drone.