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In his second-quarter earnings call on Aug. 11, Archer Aviation CEO Adam Goldstein made a point of praising an executive order released by President Donald Trump in June. Titled “Unleashing American Drone Dominance,” the executive order was, not surprisingly, primarily focused on drones — but it also established an Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) that could create a pathway to pre-certification operations of eVTOL aircraft in the national airspace system.
“The executive order in June, crafted in partnership with the White House, DOT and FAA, is the most significant federal action to date in the eVTOL sector,” Goldstein declared during the call. “It establishes a national directive for American dominance in this industry, in a presidential imperative to begin air taxi deployments in the U.S. as early as next year.”
Earnings calls are generally biased towards optimism, so some listeners may have dismissed Goldstein’s comments as hyperbole. In fact, his assessment is fair. By establishing the eIPP as an extension of Beyond — a Federal Aviation Administration program originally established for small drones — the executive order unlocks for the eIPP a broad regulatory waiver authority already granted by Congress. Indeed, the language of the waiver authority is so broad it could technically allow for commercial air taxi operations in advance of type certification, although just because the FAA has the power to waive virtually any regulation associated with air commerce does not mean it will actually do so.
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“The eIPP is not a mechanism to bypass certification requirements. Commercial operations will not take place in non-certificated eVTOL aircraft under the program,” the FAA clarified in an email to The Air Current. Instead, the agency said, “the program is intended to allow the FAA and partners to gain operational experience, collect data, and validate concepts that will support type certification and operational approval in the future,” activities that could help expedite the transition to commercial operations once type certification is achieved.
As eVTOL developers eagerly await a request for proposals that will further clarify the scope of the eIPP, the rest of the industry should be paying attention, too. Congress has explicitly authorized expansion of the Beyond program to “test and evaluate the use of new and emerging aviation concepts and technologies,” phrasing that could encompass any number of innovative products now in development. The eIPP will be an important proof point of whether a framework conceived for small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) can be successfully applied to much larger aircraft with a different set of integration concerns.
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