Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi prototypes are only just beginning to fly in the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS). But the next time you see one artificial intelligence and 4D models could be deciding when and where they fly.
Joby Aviation, one of the leading U.S. developers of eVTOL aircraft, on Tuesday announced a partnership with Air Space Intelligence (ASI) that will see the latter’s Flyways AI platform power live operational demonstrations of its air taxi, planned for later this year.
The partners aim to “advance” how electric aircraft could operate in complex airspace at scale, under existing regulations. They will share the results of the exercises before the end of 2026.
“America has long set the global standard for aviation, and modernizing our airspace is key to maintaining that leadership,” said Greg Bowles, chief policy officer for Joby, in a statement.
In addition to aircraft, Joby is developing ElevateOS, a software suite built by veterans of Uber. Like the Uber app, it matches riders with pilots and handles bookings and payments. However, ElevateOS does not handle air traffic management. That’s where Flyways comes in.
Bernard Asare, president of civil aviation for ASI, described the AI-powered platform as a “new operating system for the airspace.” A spokesperson for Joby and ASI said it manages more than 40 percent of all U.S. air traffic. Users include military and logistics customers and carriers such as Alaska Airlines.
The platform is designed to integrate with airlines and their air traffic control (ATC) and flight dispatch teams, optimizing and syncing traffic management across operators, air route traffic control centers (ARTCCs), and other FAA facilities.
It predicts what the airspace looks like not now, but eight-plus hours into the future, helping operators avoid chokepoints and congestion.
Flyways is fed by more than 100 data links including the FAA’s system wide information management (SWIM) platform, as well as ADS-B, automatic identification system (AIS), and weather data. It uses the data to train predictive machine learning models that produce 4D twins of the NAS, the fourth dimension being time. That gives users a continuous lookahead at air traffic, demand, weather, surface conditions, and more.
Using these predictive metrics, the system recommends traffic flow management strategies to minimize delays. Users can simulate how the suggestions might affect their operations before implementing them. They can also replay historical activity as if it were happening live.
Flyways also enables peer-to-peer and two-way air-to-ground communications for airline staff. It can be configured so that everyone in an organization receives the same alerts.
Per ASI, Flyways impacts one million air travelers daily. Now, Joby will help train it for the looming introduction of electric and other advanced air mobility (AAM) aircraft. eVTOL models, for instance, lift off vertically like helicopters but cruise on fixed wings, adding complexity to the NAS equation.
Autonomy for Electric Air Taxis
Beyond studying traffic management, Joby on Tuesday said the partners plan to gauge how “automated, software-defined approaches” to airspace coordination could unlock “increasingly autonomous flight operations” as the FAA modernizes the nation’s ATC system.
In other words, they will explore how future traffic management systems will communicate with uncrewed aircraft.
Joby’s flagship air taxi will be piloted at launch but could be autonomous in the future.
In 2024, it acquired the autonomy division of Xwing and its Superpilot autonomy system, which flew more than 7,000 miles on a Cessna Caravan during a U.S. Air Force exercise last summer. Joby is also developing a hybrid-powered, optionally piloted variant of its flagship design in partnership with L3Harris. It went from concept to first flight in three months, signalling the company’s investment in autonomy.
Joby is looking to use AI not just in flight operations but in other parts of its business. In December, it partnered with parking network operator Metropolis to build 25 AI-powered vertiports, each with biometrics, computer vision, and “recognition” technologies. Metropolis envisions the system managing vertiport access and air taxi bookings, producing live status reports, and coordinating vehicle movements.
The manufacturer has also partnered with the FAA and NASA to simulate air taxi operations at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (KDFW) and Los Angeles International Airport (KLAX), respectively. The agencies are studying a range of uncrewed traffic management (UTM) systems envisioned as another layer in the ATC system.
Joby is one of several manufacturers preparing for real-world testing under the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), which will permit operations with precertified aircraft. The company as soon as this summer will fly its air taxi in 10 states, including passenger flights in Manhattan and medical response in Florida.
Before then Joby will be touring the U.S. with a prototype aircraft, which flew across the San Francisco Bay in March. Earlier that week, it began flying the first of five conforming aircraft for its FAA type certification activities.
