Joby completes week of flight tests in Korea
Joby has completed a week-long series of test flights in Korea as part of the K-UAM Grand Challenge, a programme launched in 2023 by the Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) to support the commercialisation of air taxis in the Korean market.
Through the series of flights at South Jeolla Province’s Goheung Aviation Center, Joby’s eVTOL “successfully completed a range of missions demonstrating various flight profiles and conditions, including fully wing-borne flight,” explained its manufacturers. The potential to collaborate on aircraft operations with potential Korean partners was also explored.
A celebratory closing event will shortly see the “quiet acoustic footprint of Joby’s aircraft … demonstrated in front of more than 200 guests, including representatives from Korean and US government agencies”.
As seen in the image above, the aircraft wore the markings of Korean telecommunications company SK Telcom (SKT), building on a collaboration signed in September 23 in which both parties pledged their participation to the Grand Challenge and secured the excusive use of Joby’s aircraft. SKT had already invested USD $100 million into Joby Aviation as of June 2023.
The two parties are part of the ‘K-UAM Dream Team Consortium,’ which also includes Hanwha Systems, TMAP and Korea Airports Corporation, which operates the majority of the nation’s airports.
In June 2020, the Korean government set out its plan for advancing urban air mobility in Korea, with the K-UAM listing four key phases. The first ‘preparation phase’ (set to run up until 2024) looked to “explore issues and challenges, revise related laws and regulations [and] test and demonstrate civil usage,” explained the roadmap – with Joby’s first flight seeming to sneak in just within the initial demonstration timeframe.
Between 2025 and 2029, an ‘initial phase’ of Korean UAM looks to commercialise some routes and connect city hubs; something to subsequently be expanded until 2035, until generalized UAM transportation will be regularly running intercity routes. The business is not expected to be profitable until at least next decade, suggests the document, with the potential for autonomous operations to also follow from 2035.
Last year, SKT chief development offer Ha Min-yong suggested that the collaboration agreement would help SKT and Joby “open an era of ‘AI Mobility’ by shifting the paradigm of mobility through the combination of UAM and AI” – a process building on the flight tests’ work to “verify [its] capabilities for safe and stable UAM operations”.
