AEA Pilot's Guide 2023-2024 - 61

F
or electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft
under development now to enter operations,
there first has to be a concept of how they
will be operated.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration are working on
this, and preliminary drafts of concepts of operations,
or ConOps, have been written. However, it is only a few
years before makers of these novel aircraft want them
to enter service.
There is a tsunami of venture capital money pouring
into the development of novel air vehicles, and some
industry players are testing new concepts on their own
of how to operate. The Financial Times reported in 2021
that investors had put $4.3 billion into electric air taxi
startup companies in a 12-month period.
" The friction will come when the industry is ready to
go and the government is not, " said Charlie Keegan,
chief executive officer of Aviation Management
Associates Inc., a consultancy in Washington, D.C.
AMAI has expertise in air traffic control, air traffic
management, avionics and unmanned aircraft systems,
including UAS traffic management. Keegan once headed
the FAA's NextGen program and the agency's $2.3 billion
per year research and acquisition activities.
When eVTOLs start flying in urban areas, they will
initially operate like helicopters using the same rules and
routes. The FAA foresees them flying initially with pilots
aboard in the next three to five years under instrument
flight rules and visual flight rules and is working with
NASA and the industry to develop " a concept of traffic
management to provide alternative(s) for IFR and VFR, "
the FAA said in an email.
The FAA has published Urban Air Mobility ConOps
1.0 working with industry. The concept focuses on
pilot-crewed operations. FAA concept teams continue
to work with NASA and industry to assess and evaluate
uncrewed autonomous vehicles for inclusion in future
ConOps releases.
The ConOps 1.0 document does not prescribe
specific solutions, detailed operational procedures
or implementation methods except as examples of
elements in urban air mobility operations.
The ConOps follows the FAA's crawl-walk-run approach
to integrating novel air vehicles into the airspace with the
following steps.
1. Initial UAM operations are conducted using new
vehicle types that have been certified to fly within the
current regulatory and operational environment.
2. Higher tempo UAM operations are supported
through regulatory evolution and UAM corridors that
leverage collaborative separation methodologies.
3. New operational rules and infrastructure facilitate
highly automated traffic management enabling
remotely piloted and autonomous vehicles to safely
operate at increased operational tempos.
The FAA and NASA are working on urban air mobility
concepts together, and this is a subset of a larger effort
NASA calls advanced air mobility. This effort envisions
revolutionary new aircraft operating in an air transportation
system to move people and cargo between places not
served or underserved by aviation, including local, regional,
intraregional and urban areas.
The FAA is taking a risk-based approach to certifying
novel AAM aircraft and does not have a set time frame. The
agency said current FAA regulations allow aircraft to meet
its strict safety standards in innovative ways. " We use the
same data-driven approach when evaluating these complex
systems that have created the safest aviation system in the
world. "
When tailoring existing rules to new concepts, the
FAA will determine the certification requirements for the
eVTOL's design, production, airworthiness and operation.
Some certifications could require the FAA to issue special
conditions or additional airworthiness criteria, depending on
the air vehicle.
There are more similarities than differences between
certifying eVTOLs and helicopters, and the agency will use
the same data-driven approach to certifying eVTOLs that it
uses with helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.
The FAA recently made some changes in its regulatory
approach to eVTOLs but said it should not delay
development projects. " The agency is pursuing a predictable
framework that will better accommodate the need to train
Continued on following page...
- 61 -
AEA Pilot's Guide 2023-2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AEA Pilot's Guide 2023-2024
