Originally published at: Joby Completes First Piloted eVTOL Flight Between Public Airports - AVweb
Milestone highlights integration with FAA-controlled airspace.
Itâs a drone that can carry a person.
Their âtest fleetâ that covered all these miles is a couple of Cirruses.
Oh. I was wondering how theyâve done 40k miles and never done a cross country flight.
They are a 135 operator that uses Cirruses. Odd how an AI written article did not mention that.
Matt, whatâs the deal? Cirrus or evtol thingy?
Well, they are claiming 40,000 miles, not 400,000.
If these things were truly safe, and the company has confidence in them, 90% of the flights would be with people in them. The exciting milestone would be to make this flight autonomously.
These things are not safe and they know it.
Hereâs the thing: Humans make mistakes. See: â400K milesâ in a comment above, and the minor discrepancy between âa hold patternâ and âa holding patternâ in the article. To be fair, regurgitated press releases are, and have always been fodder for AvWeb readers. We want someone to keep up with, and pre-digest, the latest vendor announcements for us so we donât have to wade through paragraphs of self-aggrandizing blather ourselves.
It you want to see how much faith you can put into a press release (much less a synopsis of one) just scroll to the very bottom of the release and read the âForward-Looking Statementsâ section. Essentially, Joby is reporting that they made a 10-mile manned (piloted, not autonomous) flight and did not create a smoking hole, so please invest in our venture. You know, baby steps.
This has been going on since Ben Franklin. In the seventies, I would get such announcements from military vendors over ARPANET. AvWeb, and it predecessors, provided a welcome layer of insulation by chewing that cud, and presenting us with an edited synopsis from a pilotâs viewpoint.
Unlike other AvWeb contributors, Matt appears to have the minimum necessary aviation credentials. Perhaps more than are required to feed a press release into ChatGPT Sadly, we have no way of knowing.
And thatâs the damnable thing.
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The amount of effort that goes into tearing down any stories about EVTOL aircraft amazes me. Do you people think that itâs just a conspiracy? Maybe youâre just putting in your hours in at a Moscow disinformation boiler room so you can buy another bottle of vodka for tonight?
Oops. Thanks for correcting me.
You have to admit that some of the details are vagueâŚ
Amazing. A 12 minute flight and they are marching towards commercial operations. I doubt it. What is the longest flight possible and how long does it take to recharge. This is an interesting toy but it is not a viable commercial aircraft.
One way to know is to move to where the real authors have gone, after being fired here.
To a site where they eschew the shortcuts and still have real aviation journalists, instead of stenographers and AI.
Firecrown has decided those things donât matter. And when my subscriptions to their formerly must-read magazines are up, I wonât be renewing, for the first time in decades.
Most of us donât like the obvious hype. They canât do what they promise, and probably never will be able to.
In the meantime, theyâll burn up lots of VC $$$$ that might have gone into something with actual promise. Oh, well. You know what they say about a fool and his moneyâŚ
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Been there since day 1, FBR.
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Yes. Some of the details are vague. But there is plenty of info online from company websites (I know, every website is slanted towards its own self interest) to legitimate aviation journalists that you can believe or not. I donât believe this article is part of a conspiracy to trick people into believing the untrue. Itâs all just information. And just like the comment section, you can use your knowledge of the overall information available and choose what you want to believe.
I believe that they can do what theyâre promising. The timeline is probably overly optimistic but to say that they will never do it seems like saying that humans will never be able walk on the moon. Iâm not sure where you are on that subject but I personally believe that they already have. As far as the hype, itâs part of the modern day communication/sales culture. This article is mild compared to articles trying to convince people how to vote.
Yeah, I think you basically got it. They are not promising anything impossible. And it could happen. And I think it will, eventually, roughly around the time people start walking on the moon again, which did actually happen several times (I saw it live on tvâŚ).
The P-51 went from drawing board to flying prototype, to production in months, not decades. True story. But things have changed. The kind of bold, rapid advancement we used to see is becoming much, much more infrequent.
I would place a long bet that they donât fly 6 real, paying passengers, at once, on actual journeys within 20 years, on trips over 30nm, in an evtol. But they might in an electric airplane, or helicopter⌠That just wonât be newsworthy.
I have no doubt men have landed on the moon, if thatâs what you are implying.
I still doubt these guys can do what they say, but Iâll be interested to see if they can.
The fact that the hype is to be expected now doesnât excuse it, nor does it convince me itâs worthy of investment.
I see no correlation with voting or campaign ads. But making that comparison only further lowers the bar on honesty.
The amount of time that the P-51 went from concept to prototype is truly astounding given that CAD-CAM was a distant dream. Joby started in 2009 and didnât have a scale model prototype that flew until 2015. Theyâve been at it for years and always had over optimistic goals. But seeing where they are today, I would definitely take that bet. I think they will have paying customers in less than 10 years.