Thu, Jun 27, 2024
Air Taxi Operations Software for Partners, Pilots, and Consumers
Commercial eVTOL aircraft maker Joby Aviation, Inc., has announced that the proprietary software suite developed in-house to support its operations has gained FAA authorization for operational use.
The suite, named ‘ElevateOS’, consists of operations and schedule management software, tools for pilots, a mobile app for riders, and an intelligent matching engine. The rider app and matching engine are similar to ground ride-hailing apps used by Uber or Lyft. Joby’s matching engine and mobile app, the software matches passengers with available aircraft and vertiports that provide the most efficient travel.
Joby acquired Uber Elevate, the air taxi division of Uber in 2021 which had been operating the world’s first on-demand air taxi service, UberCopter, in New York City since 2019 using legacy helicopters that were bookable through the Uber mobile app. Since then Joby has been developing, enhancing, and testing their software.
Testing has been performed under actual and simulated operating conditions by authority of Joby’s FAA Part 135 certification approved in 2022 which has allowed the company to test core components of the software for its planned operations. These include offering team members an on-demand passenger service with choices for departure/arrival sites and timing using the mobile app, matching passengers with similar routes, taking payments, and the integration of back-end operational software with the pilot and rider apps.
Eric Allison, Chief Product Officer at Joby and former Head of Uber Elevate said, “The air taxi service we plan to deliver isn’t like any sort of air travel that’s existed before. We expect travelers to book on-demand and to be boarding an aircraft just minutes later, much like the experience of using ground-based ridesharing today. That required us to totally rethink the software and the operations of these aircraft. ElevateOS is the result of many years of iteration and real-life experience and we’re confident it is the most sophisticated, efficient, and flexible suite of air operations tools available today.”
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