eVTOL Certification Tracker: Who Is Actually Certified in 2026

Updated September 24, 2026 · 12 min read

Short answer: one passenger-carrying eVTOL is certified and flying paying passengers today — EHang’s two-seat, pilotless EH216-S, certified by China’s CAAC. No eVTOL holds a type certificate from the FAA or EASA yet. The two US programmes closest to it are Archer, which closed phase 3 of the FAA’s four-phase type certification process in April 2026, and Joby, whose first FAA-conforming aircraft began flight testing in March 2026 ahead of FAA-piloted certification flights. Two well-funded European programmes — Lilium and Volocopter — did not survive: both entered insolvency between December 2024 and February 2025.

Last verified: 24 September 2026. Every row below links to the primary announcement or regulatory document it rests on. Where a company’s own figure is quoted — range, seat count, timing — it is labelled as a company figure, because no regulator has published those numbers.

What “certified” actually means

Most confusion about air taxis comes from four different milestones being reported with the same word. They are not interchangeable, and a programme can sit in one of them for years:

• Type certificate (TC) — the regulator agrees the design is airworthy. This is the milestone people mean by “certified”.
• Production certificate (PC) — the regulator agrees the company can build that design repeatably.
• Airworthiness certificate (AC) — an individual aircraft is cleared to fly.
• Air operator certificate (OC / AOC) — a company is cleared to carry paying passengers with it. Only at this point does a ticket exist.

A “first flight” is none of these. Neither is a demonstration flight at an airshow, an order book, or a letter of intent. The table separates them.

eVTOL programme status, September 2026

What the table shows that the headlines do not

Certification is not the bottleneck people expected — capital is. Of the ten programmes above, two ended in insolvency and one is paused, all three for funding reasons rather than technical failure. None of the three had been refused a certificate.

The one aircraft carrying passengers is the one that carries no pilot and barely leaves the neighbourhood. The EH216-S is a two-seat multirotor flying short sightseeing circuits at approved sites. It is a genuine regulatory first, and it is not the intercity air taxi the sector has been selling.

“Phase 3 of 4” sounds like 75% done. It is not. Phase 4 is where compliance is demonstrated by test and analysis — the longest and most failure-prone stretch, and the one that has moved every published industry timeline to the right at least once.

How we verify each row

A row only enters this table when the milestone can be traced to one of: the regulator’s own publication, the company’s investor-relations release or SEC filing, or an aviation trade publication reporting a named, dated event. Marketing language is stripped: “unveiled”, “revealed”, “announced” and “targeted” never appear in the status column, because they describe intent rather than an achieved state.

Status values are controlled, and mean exactly this: Concept — no flying aircraft. Prototype — an aircraft exists but is not yet in a formal certification flight-test campaign. Flight testing — flying, with a certification project open. In certification — formal regulator phases under way. Type certified — a TC has been issued. In commercial service — an operator certificate exists and tickets are sold. Paused and Wound down — development stopped, temporarily or permanently.

Where a programme’s own claims and an independent report disagree, the table follows the independent report and says so in the milestone column.

Why is an eVTOL certified differently from an aeroplane?

An eVTOL is neither an aeroplane nor a helicopter in regulatory terms. It takes off on thrust like a rotorcraft and cruises on a wing like an aeroplane, and the existing codes — Part 23 for normal-category aeroplanes, Part 27 for small rotorcraft — were each written for one of those and not the other. Regulators resolved this in two different ways on the two sides of the Atlantic, and the difference explains a great deal about which programmes are moving fastest.

The most consequential line is the Enhanced category in EASA’s SC-VTOL. An aircraft flying commercial passengers over a city falls into it, and Enhanced demands continued safe flight and landing after any single failure — the aircraft must keep flying and land at a chosen site, not merely survive a controlled descent. That one phrase drives motor count, battery segmentation, flight-control redundancy and much of the vehicle’s empty weight.

Why is the pilot, not the aircraft, sometimes the bottleneck?

Before SFAR No. 120, the United States had no practical way to license a powered-lift pilot. The traditional path assumes dual flight controls so an instructor can take over, and many eVTOL designs have a single pilot station with single controls. The SFAR resolved this with three routes: shared accessible controls, expanded simulator credit toward the experience requirement, and deviation authority for future designs.

That matters for the table above because a type certificate with no pilots to fly the aircraft produces no revenue. The practical sequence for a commercial air-taxi service is four approvals, not one:

1. Type certificate — the design is airworthy.
2. Production certificate — the company may build aircraft to that design repeatably.
3. Air carrier certificate (Part 135 for on-demand operations) — the operator may sell seats.
4. Rated pilots — enough certificated powered-lift pilots and instructors to run a schedule.

Programmes routinely announce the first while the other three are years out. When a company says it is “certified”, the useful question is: certified for what, by whom, and does that certificate let it carry a paying passenger tomorrow?

What do the unit economics have to look like?

Air taxis are not competing with airlines. They compete with a car for the same journey, and in a handful of cities with a helicopter. The arithmetic that decides the sector is cost per seat-mile at realistic utilisation, and it is unforgiving at small scale.

Three costs dominate, and only one of them falls when you electrify. Energy drops sharply — that is real. The pilot does not get cheaper. And battery packs carry certified life limits, so every flight accrues a replacement liability whether or not the operator books it. An eVTOL that flies four revenue legs a day cannot spread those fixed costs; the business cases that close assume something closer to fifteen, which in turn assumes charging in minutes and vertiports where the demand actually is.

How much noise does an eVTOL really make, and why is it the political constraint?

Noise is what decides whether a city allows vertiports, and it is measured in ways that are easy to misread. Distributed electric propulsion genuinely helps: many small rotors turning slower move the sound to higher frequencies and cut the blade-slap signature that makes helicopters carry so far. But a hovering aircraft of any kind is loud at close range, and the community complaint is rarely about the peak reading — it is about how often the sound happens.

• Peak level in dBA at a stated distance is the figure companies publish. It is real but incomplete.
• Sound exposure level counts the whole event, which flatters a fast, high-flying aircraft and penalises one that hovers.
• Day-night average level weights night operations far more heavily, and is usually the number a planning authority applies.
• Event count is the one residents actually experience. Thirty quiet arrivals an hour can generate more objections than four loud ones.

Treat any single decibel claim with the same scepticism as a range claim: ask at what distance, in which flight phase, and against which metric. Noise certification under the applicable rules produces a number; a marketing comparison to a household appliance does not.

Which eVTOL programmes have already failed?

This sector has raised more capital than the fixed-wing electric aircraft field and lost more of it. Two European programmes that were, for years, treated as front-runners entered insolvency proceedings, and their aircraft stopped flying toward a certificate. The pattern behind the failures is consistent enough to be predictive:

• Certification cost was underestimated by an order of magnitude. Flight testing on conforming aircraft, with regulator pilots, across every failure case an Enhanced-category rule demands, is a multi-year spend with no revenue attached.
• Capital was raised against demonstrations. Impressive flights attract funding; they do not shorten stage 4 of certification by a day.
• Order books were conditional. Headline numbers in the hundreds of aircraft carried few binding commitments and little cash.
• Infrastructure was assumed. Vertiports, grid connections and air-traffic integration were treated as someone else’s problem, and largely remain unfunded.

The survivors are distinguished less by their aircraft than by their balance sheets and their willingness to spend years in unglamorous compliance work. The same discipline separates real programmes from announcements in the fixed-wing field — see our electric aircraft tracker for that side of the sector.

What would actually change this table?

Four milestones are worth watching, and none of them is a first flight:

1. A Western type certificate for a passenger-carrying eVTOL. It would establish that the special-conditions route works end to end, and would give every other applicant a precedent to point at.
2. A Part 135 certificate held by an eVTOL operator with rated powered-lift pilots. This is the approval that lets someone sell a seat.
3. Published operating data at commercial utilisation. Dispatch reliability, turnaround time and pack life in service are what turn a certificate into a business.
4. A vertiport with a firm grid connection in a city centre. Aircraft can be built faster than electrical infrastructure can be permitted.

Conditional orders, city partnerships, letters of intent and demonstration flights at air shows tell you almost nothing about any of the four. Our methodology page explains how each row in the table above is sourced and what we deliberately exclude.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has any eVTOL been certified to carry paying passengers?

Certification status differs by jurisdiction and by what the certificate covers, which is why the table above separates type certification from production and operating approvals. A type certificate alone never permits commercial passenger service: the operator also needs a production certificate, an air carrier certificate and pilots rated in the powered-lift category.

What is the difference between eVTOL and a helicopter?

A helicopter generates lift from one large main rotor throughout the flight. Most eVTOL designs use several smaller electric rotors for take-off and then transition to a wing for cruise, which is far more efficient in forward flight. That transition is the hard part, both aerodynamically and in certification, because the aircraft must remain controllable in every configuration and after any single failure.

What does SC-VTOL “Enhanced category” mean?

It is EASA’s higher safety tier, applying to aircraft flying commercial passenger operations or over congested areas. It requires continued safe flight and landing after a failure — the aircraft must fly on and land at a chosen site, not simply reach the ground under control. The requirement drives redundancy into motors, batteries, wiring and flight controls, and is a large part of why these aircraft are heavy.

Does SFAR No. 120 certify eVTOL aircraft?

No. SFAR No. 120, codified as 14 CFR Part 194, covers pilot certification, training and operating rules for powered-lift. Aircraft approval remains a separate type-certification process under Part 21. The SFAR removed a genuine blocker — there was no workable path to license powered-lift pilots — but it approves people and operations, not designs.

How far can an eVTOL fly?

Published design ranges for passenger eVTOLs typically sit in the tens of miles rather than the hundreds, before reserves. The physics is the same as for fixed-wing electric aircraft, with an extra penalty: hovering is expensive, and the energy spent on take-off and landing is unavailable for cruise. Our electric aircraft range estimator shows how the underlying battery numbers constrain any electric design.

Are eVTOLs actually quieter than helicopters?

In cruise, generally yes, and the frequency content is less intrusive. In a hover close to the ground the advantage narrows. The more important question for a city is how many events happen per hour and at what time of day, because that is what planning authorities regulate and what residents notice.

Will air taxis be autonomous?

Not initially. Every credible near-term programme carries a pilot, because there is no certification basis for autonomous passenger flight in the United States or Europe. Removing the pilot is the single change that most improves the economics, which is why it appears in long-term plans — and why those plans depend on rulemaking that has not started.

How often is this tracker updated?

Each row carries the date of its last verification and cites the document behind it. The page is re-checked whenever a regulator publishes a certificate, a special condition, an operating approval or an airworthiness directive affecting one of these programmes. Company targets are labelled as company targets; regulator actions are cited to the regulator.

Sources

• Joby Aviation — first FAA-conforming aircraft takes flight (11 March 2026)
• Archer Aviation — Q1 2026 results, FAA certification progress (11 May 2026)
• EHang — production certificate from the CAAC and operator certificates for human-carrying pilotless flight
• Wisk Aero — second Generation 6 aircraft enters flight test (4 May 2026); Boeing and Archer agree Archer will acquire Wisk, SkyGrid and Insitu (10 August 2026)
• Vertical Aerospace — certification delays reported
• Eve Air Mobility — preparing 2026 prototype flights, Aerospace America
• Supernal — programme pause and leadership change, FlightGlobal, and the Hyundai–KAI agreement that followed
• Volocopter — insolvency proceedings
• Lilium — second insolvency filing, Vertical

Related on ZeroCarbonDrive

• eVTOL air taxis explained: what flies today
• eVTOL air taxis explained
• Electric and hydrogen aircraft programmes: what has flown, what is certified
• Electric aircraft explained: batteries, range and the physics
• Aviation emissions statistics

Written and edited by Muhammet Çay, Founder and Editor · LinkedIn · How we source and correct this site · Report an error

Every figure on this page is dated and linked to its source. How we verify · Editorial policy · Report a correction