An Introduction to Innovate28
The FAA has released an implementation plan setting forth the steps by which the agency, industry, governmental, and private stakeholders intend to safely facilitate the commencement of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations in the near-term.
Comprising equal-parts feasibility and folly, the FAA’s plan—assonantly dubbed Innovate28—posits the existence of a functioning, U.S. domestic, at-scale, AAM ecosystem by 2028—as connoted in the plan’s jaunty appellation.
As defined in the FAA’s AAM Coordination and Leadership Act of October 2022, “AAM is a transportation system that moves people and property by air between two points in the United States using aircraft with advanced technologies, including electric aircraft, or electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft, in both controlled and uncontrolled airspace.”
Within the context of its Innovate28 AAM Implementation Plan, the FAA limits the scope of AAM to piloted, passenger-carrying operations.
The agency describes its role in integrating AAM into the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) as: “Ensuring this new generation of aircraft maintains the highest level of operational safety that defines commercial aviation today.”
To the points of its priority and statutory responsibility vis-à-vis the implementation of AAM, the FAA states is seeks to “Ensure the safety of the traveling public” by “looking at every necessary aspect to support AAM flights: the aircraft themselves, the framework for operations, access to the airspace, operator training, infrastructure development, environmental impacts, and community engagement.”
As AAM aircraft are developed, the FAA will amend, as appropriate, regulations and pilot training requirements. Longer term, the agency will develop permanent regulations by dint of which it aspires to safely facilitate powered lift operations and pilot training and certification.
The FAA is implementing a crawl-walk-run methodology cognizant of early opportunities to support Entry Into Service (EIS) operations through extant services and infrastructure whilst necessitating minimal changes to such.
The FAA has recognized and undertaken the collaborative actions requisite the maturation of AAM concepts, conventions, and regulatory frameworks beyond initial operations and into the sector’s mid-term and mature phases.
The implementation plan enumerates and explains the steps by which the FAA intends to oversee the advent of AAM operations, the integration of AAM aircraft into the U.S. National Airspace System, and the safe up-scaling of the Advanced Air Mobility and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) sectors.
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