US air taxi chief says European regulation ‘not good for business’
The head of a leading company in the race to bring electric aircraft to the skies has hit out at Europe’s aviation regulator, warning its rules threatened to put the fledgling sector out of business. Adam Goldstein, CE of Archer Aviation, said in an interview that certification guidance published by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency would make it “extremely hard” to bring the new vehicles — often described as air taxis — to market. “EASA has openly said, ‘We know our regulations are harder and not good for business, and we don’t care,’” Goldstein told the Financial Times. California-based Archer is among the companies seeking approval to operate so-called electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to provide a range of services from short-hop flights over congested urban areas to longer regional flights. The company, co-founded by Goldstein, went public in 2021 and has a market capitalisation of about $800mn. Several companies hope aviation safety regulators will begin to certify their vehicles for flight from as early as next year. EASA is the only regulator to have published formal guidance for eVTOLs offering commercial services to passengers. Its approach assumes relatively large flight volumes over urban areas. The agency has told developers to adopt the same standard for safety as the one applied to large commercial jetliners: the chance of just one catastrophic failure in 1bn flight hours, or “10 to the minus nine”, in industry parlance. Goldstein criticised the regulation as too strict, saying there was no point in fostering an industry only “to regulate it out of business”, when it was possible to take “an approach that can still be at the highest levels of safety, but . . . that is more amendable to allowing companies to build around.” Archer, whose second prototype, Midnight, will have its first test flight this summer, wants to build a vehicle that is “as safe as commercial airliners today”, Goldstein said. EASA said in a statement: “Archer’s opinion is that high safety standards are not good for business. This point of view is not shared by EASA.” The EU regulator said the safety objectives it had set out were based on “risk assessment” and had been “evaluated to be equivalent to bus transportation safety, once eVTOL operations have reached a moderate scale”.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2023-06-12/general/us-air-taxi-chief-says-european-regulation-2018not-good-for-business2019
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US air taxi chief says European regulation ‘not good for business’
The head of a leading company in the race to bring electric aircraft to the skies has hit out at Europe’s aviation regulator, warning its rules threatened to put the fledgling sector out of business. Adam Goldstein, CE of Archer Aviation, said in an interview that certification guidance published by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency would make it “extremely hard” to bring the new vehicles — often described as air taxis — to market. “EASA has openly said, ‘We know our regulations are harder and not good for business, and we don’t care,’” Goldstein told the Financial Times. California-based Archer is among the companies seeking approval to operate so-called electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to provide a range of services from short-hop flights over congested urban areas to longer regional flights. The company, co-founded by Goldstein, went public in 2021 and has a market capitalisation of about $800mn. Several companies hope aviation safety regulators will begin to certify their vehicles for flight from as early as next year. EASA is the only regulator to have published formal guidance for eVTOLs offering commercial services to passengers. Its approach assumes relatively large flight volumes over urban areas. The agency has told developers to adopt the same standard for safety as the one applied to large commercial jetliners: the chance of just one catastrophic failure in 1bn flight hours, or “10 to the minus nine”, in industry parlance. Goldstein criticised the regulation as too strict, saying there was no point in fostering an industry only “to regulate it out of business”, when it was possible to take “an approach that can still be at the highest levels of safety, but . . . that is more amendable to allowing companies to build around.” Archer, whose second prototype, Midnight, will have its first test flight this summer, wants to build a vehicle that is “as safe as commercial airliners today”, Goldstein said. EASA said in a statement: “Archer’s opinion is that high safety standards are not good for business. This point of view is not shared by EASA.” The EU regulator said the safety objectives it had set out were based on “risk assessment” and had been “evaluated to be equivalent to bus transportation safety, once eVTOL operations have reached a moderate scale”.<br/>
