Joby Aviation and Beta Technologies have carried out demonstration flights across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as Texas became the sixth location to host trials under the US Department of Transportation's eVTOL Integration Pilot Programme (eIPP).

The flights, conducted under the Texas Department of Transportation's Project Nexus proposal, ran from 10 to 14 September and brought together federal, state and local authorities with Joby and Beta as industry partners. Demonstrations began at Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance airport before expanding to routes across north Texas, including a round trip to Dallas Fort Worth International airport, where Joby's aircraft landed directly at its fixed base operator, DFW Corporate Aviation.

Further flights included a low-noise round trip from AFW over Arlington and the Fort Worth Stockyards, and a route to Toyota Motor North America's headquarters in Plano, tracing a planned operational corridor between the campus and AFW.

To support the campaign and longer-term operations in the region, Joby has leased a 45,000sqft facility at Perot Field within the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone. The work builds on FAA and NASA research into electric air taxi integration in north Texas dating back to 2018, including a 2023 simulation at NASA's Future Flight Central facility that examined the feasibility of up to 50 electric air taxi operations an hour in the DFW terminal area.

“We began pursuing our vision at Joby in 2009, and after thousands of hours of flight testing, with the eIPP programme supporting us, our industry is ready to take off,” says JoeBen Bevirt, founder and chief executive of Joby.

Joby is in the fifth and final stage of FAA type certification, with conforming aircraft undergoing Type Inspection Authorization testing. Also featured during the week was J208, a Cessna 208B Caravan fitted with Joby's autonomous flight technology, which stopped at AFW on 10 September as part of a separate coast-to-coast demonstration tour that began in Concord, California.

The eIPP spans eight projects across 26 states, established under the Unleashing Drone Dominance executive order and unveiled in March.