FAA type certification
The US regulatory approval that confirms an aircraft design is safe to build and operate commercially — the gate every new aircraft must pass before it can fly passengers for money.
Learn first
The FAA issues a type certificate when it has verified that a specific aircraft design meets federal airworthiness standards: the structure holds, the systems fail safely, the pilots can control it in the conditions it will encounter. Each production copy then needs an airworthiness certificate confirming it was built to that approved design. For conventional jets and helicopters, the standards are mature. For eVTOL aircraft — electric, multi-rotor, built by companies with no certification history — the FAA had to write new standards from scratch, which is why certification timelines stretch years beyond initial flight tests and why achieving it is a hard competitive moat.
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The aircraft that actually counts
On March 11 a Joby eVTOL flew over Marina, California with no audience — the first one built to the exact design the FAA has agreed to certify, and the closest any US air-taxi maker has come to a commercial license.
The eVTOL race reorders
Archer's Midnight is the first electric air taxi to clear the FAA's full checklist for how it will prove the aircraft is safe — overtaking Joby, stuck one notch short since 2023.
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