Certified eVTOLs operating in the US before end of 2028 says FAA chief

FAA acting administrator Chris Rocheleau is confident operations involving eVTOL aircraft will be certified in the US before the end of 2028.

He tells us the agency is ready to safely regulate aircraft certification, pilot operations and training and integration into the national airspace.

Rocheleau believes some “small-scale” revenue-generating eVTOL operations will be up and running in about 18 months, before a wider roll-out and full certification towards the end of the decade.

“Today, if we had a certified aircraft and certified pilots, we could be flying these, pick your city and pick your function,” he says. “Those three things, aircraft certification, pilot operations and training and then the integration in the airspace, honestly, we’re pretty much ready for that.

“It is really less about us being ready to handle it and more about the manufacturers being able to meet the standards that I think we all agree on. I don’t hesitate to say that we will see certified aircraft flying in the airspace before the end of 2028.”

According to Rocheleau, it is unlikely initial revenue-generating operations will be authorised via waiver or exemption. The FAA’s powered-lift Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) enables the agency to effectively oversee these operations, he notes.

Plus, the eVTOL pilot programme, recently announced in President Trump’s executive orders aimed at boosting the US drone industry, will offer the opportunity to gather operational data from leading OEMs to further inform the agency’s rule making. It also gives operators less ready to begin operations the opportunity to test their processes in a sandbox environment, he adds.

The FAA had a crucial role in drafting the recent executive orders Unleashing American Drone Dominance, and the targets set out in them were largely welcomed by the US and global drone industries.

“We worked very closely with the White House and Department of Transportation secretary Sean P. Duffy to make sure that we as a government and the industry are able to advance this in a safe, but also efficient manner. That’s why we really appreciated the executive orders, because they drive us to an outcome. There’s nothing like having a deadline to meet.”

Rocheleau says eVTOL aircraft formed a “big piece” of the executive orders, as well as enabling further drone activity. The FAA chief was recently in north Texas observing UAS traffic management where a number of operators including commercial and law enforcement integrated safely into the airspace.

“There’s a lot of technology out there that the president and secretary have made it clear that we want to be leaning in on these things, safely. That’s my job,” he says.

Since arriving back at the FAA Rocheleau has concentrated on what he calls “four pillars”: safety, modernisation, innovation and hiring.

The first pillar was flung into hyper-focus nine days after his return following the Potomac River mid-air collision which sadly killed all 67 onboard both aircraft. “That tragedy was a further reminder, every time we come to work, we have got to focus on safety, whether that’s in drones, commercial aviation or general aviation.”

The second pillar centres around the FAA Reauthorisation Act, signed into effect in May 2024. Rocheleau says: “There were a number of provisions in there that would help the agency become more modernised.” Including, first and foremost, a new air traffic control system.

“When we think about what we have in place today to manage the system, it is incredibly safe. But at the same time, it’s incredibly old,” he adds.

“We need new fibre optic cables, new radars, new radios for the controllers to talk to pilots. And then of course, at some point, to be able to consolidate some of these facilities and make sure that we have a modern air traffic system for the United States.”

In recent times, the FAA has seen an increasing number of outages of its air traffic control system. In May 2025, there were at least communication system breakdowns at airports including Newark Liberty and Houston’s William P. Hobby.

“We have procedures to ensure that we have resiliency and redundancy so the system continues to operate safely. But it was very clear early on with some of the challenges we were having with the technology that we needed a new system,” says Rocheleau.

“Myself, secretary Duffy and a handful of others sat down and said, ‘We’ve got to do better’. So, the president has made it a priority for this administration to build that new system.”

Rocheleau was in France last month for the Paris Air Show alongside Duffy to announce a five-country – US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – AAM roadmap focused on harmonising eVTOL certification and operational regulations.

“We know manufacturers want to operate globally, so we have to be able to enable that safely around the world. We know other countries are flying in an experimental phase, and we wanted to make sure as US manufacturers come to market they can do so in other countries.

“We have longstanding relationships on certification and safety with our partners, so we believed that was a great place to start.”

The absence of some countries also working through an experimental phase, such as Brazil or the United Arab Emirates, has raised one or two eyebrows. However, the FAA chief says eVTOL operations are not unique to the five launch member states. “Using Brazil as an example, we want to make sure those other partners join us. So this public announcement has now had us talking to our other counterparts.

“This is an iterative process, but we are very excited about bringing in new authorities to work with us.”