Matt Thurber, editor-in-chief at AIN Media Group, has been flying since 1975 and writing about aviation since 1978 and now has the best job in the world, running editorial operations for Aviation International News, Business Jet Traveler, and FutureFlight.aero. In addition to working as an A&amp;P mechanic on everything from Piper Cubs to turboprops, Matt taught flying at his father’s flight school in Plymouth, Mass., in the early 1980s, flew for an aircraft owner/pilot, and for two summer seasons hunted swordfish near the George’s Banks off the East Coast from a Piper Super Cub. An ATP certificated fixed-wing pilot and CFII and commercial helicopter pilot, Matt is type-rated in the Citation 500 and Gulfstream V/550. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Matt and his team cover the entire aviation scene including business aircraft, helicopters, avionics, safety, manufacturing, charter, fractionals, technology, air transport, advanced air mobility, defense, and other subjects of interest to AIN, BJT, and FutureFlight readers.

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Joby Aviation is now preparing for final assembly of the first of several conforming examples of its four-passenger eVTOL aircraft intended for type inspection authorization [TIA] flight testing. Announcing the milestone during an August 6 briefing on it second quarter financial results, the California-based company said the testing marks the fifth and final stage of the FAA type certification process.
The company's pilots will begin flying the conforming aircraft that will be used for TIA testing later this year. FAA pilots are expected to fly these aircraft in early 2026.
At the end of the second quarter, Joby had $991 million in cash and short-term investments. The company had a net loss of $324.7 million, consisting of a net operating loss of $167.9 million and other losses of $156.7 million.
“Net loss in the second quarter of 2025 increased by $201.4 million compared with the net loss in the second quarter of 2024,” Joby reported. “The higher net loss compared with 2024 primarily reflected the unfavorable revaluation of warrants and earnout shares of $136.1 million, a $40.3 million loss on common stock issuance in a private placement, and a higher loss from operations and lower interest and other income, net of $24.9 million. Higher operating expenses reflected growth in our organization and increased purchases of prototype parts for manufacturing, testing, and certification.”
During the quarter, Joby closed on the first $250 million tranche of a $500 million investment from Toyota. The Japanese car maker had announced this further support in October 2024.
Second-quarter net loss was $242.3 million higher than first-quarter 2025, and other loss $237.6 million higher, “primarily reflecting a revaluation loss on our warrants and earnout shares and loss on common stock issuance in a private placement.” There was a $4.6 million higher loss from operations comparing the second to the first quarter of 2025, due primarily to “increased personnel and operating expenses as we grew the team to support certification and manufacturing, and lower payments from government contract deliverables.”
Joby recorded an adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter of a $131.6 million loss, which was $4.4 million higher than the first quarter of 2025 and $24.3 million higher than the second quarter of 2024, attributable to the “employee costs and support associated with the development, certification, and manufacturing of the aircraft.”
“The [TIA] aircraft is nearly identical to the aircraft that we’ve been flying before,” said Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt during the results call. “This is the culmination of more than a decade of hard work from the Joby team and close collaboration with the FAA in order to build this aircraft.” FAA designated airworthiness inspectors, who work for Joby but are delegated their authority by the FAA, are working on the factory floor in Marina, California, inspecting the aircraft as they are being built and measuring them against Joby’s quality system.
Bevirt described these aircraft as “a design that met all of the certification standards that we’d agreed to through phase one, two, three, and four of the certification program. All of the work that we’ve done maturing our manufacturing systems and processes…has built to this moment. This is us putting the keystone in the arch…preparing for this magical moment when this aircraft takes to the air, and then with Joby pilots, and then we do for-credit flights for certification credit with the FAA pilots on board.”
<h2>Five TIA eVTOLs Needed for Test Flights</h2>
There will be five aircraft in the testing program. “There are multiple TIA tests that we’re… working on getting approval with the FAA,” he said. “Each one of those test plans has a specific one of those five aircraft that we plan to test it against. We’ve started building parts for all five of those aircraft. We have multiple others where the airframes are going through the airframe assembly process, and we’re building components and systems for many of them, so we’re in full swing. And I couldn’t be more proud of the work that our incredible manufacturing team is doing across the sites in San Carlos, Marina [both in California], and soon, [Dayton], Ohio.
Bevirt didn’t respond to a question about the performance specifications of the TIA-qualified, final design-conforming aircraft, nor did he give any additional insight into the timeline for FAA certification. Joby has previously described its aircraft as being able to carry four passengers up to 200 mph.
The TIA flights, Bevirt said, “are the flights that the FAA pilots fly to confirm that we are compliant. And that’s what gives us points on the board for stage [phase] five, and once those are complete, then we’re in the final stretch of stage five and type certification.”
Joby has completed 70% of the phase four certification requirements, according to Bevirt. “The remaining 30% will come in over the next year or so, as we progress the final pieces. But I want to be clear that we do not need to be at 100% on stage four prior to beginning the TIA work. Some of those stage four pieces are not required for the TIA flight test. We’re at a very, very strong place, both on the Joby side and on the FAA side, to deliver on our goals of beginning the TIA flight test with FAA pilots on board early next year. The momentum is just absolutely phenomenal. And we’re so grateful to the FAA for the incredible lean-in that they’ve shown for many quarters in a row here, just going above and beyond.”
Having recently announced that it plans to acquire <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2025-08-04/joby-buys-blade-passenger-operation-evtol-air-taxi">Blade Air Mobility’s charter flight brokerage</a> business for $125 million, including lounge facilities at airports and vertiports, Joby is planning how to integrate the Blade's passenger operations. Blade flights are flown by independent charter operators using their own helicopters.
<h2>Integrating Blade Air Mobility</h2>
“We do see incredible demand and incredible opportunities in markets across the country and around the world,” Bevirt said. “This acquisition of Blade supercharges our operations in New York with an incredible existing operations team with amazing vertical infrastructure, with exclusive lounges, with a loyal customer base, and we’re absolutely thrilled with the way that we believe this will allow us to ramp our operations in New York much faster than we had previously planned on.”
Further explaining the Blade acquisition, Bevirt said that “having a lounge and a facility at those locations is extraordinarily valuable. Blade also has a large network of takeoff and landing locations in Europe as well as the greater New York area, and we think that network of takeoff and landing locations is an incredibly valuable and under-appreciated asset.”
As for airspace infrastructure that would facilitate Blade operations and eVTOL aircraft such as Joby’s, Bevirt said, “We work closely with air traffic controllers in multiple markets across the country, and we’ve been doing groundbreaking planning for new vertiports. I’d also love to highlight the incredible work that the FAA is doing and that [Transportation] Secretary Sean Duffy has spoken about on enhancing and modernizing our air traffic control framework.”
That said, Bevirt added, “Once we get type certification, we also need to put our Joby aircraft onto a Part 135 operating certificate before we begin passenger service. We do have the opportunity to do air tours prior to the aircraft going on the 135, but that is an additional step on top of the type certification.” The Blade acquisition does not include a Part 135 charter certificate, but Joby Elevate Inc. is already a holder of a Part 135 certificate, with a single airplane, a Cirrus SR22.
Bevirt said that Joby will remain flexible on plans to equip Blade with eVTOL aircraft. “We do have a preference for retaining the long-term free cash flow and the long-term revenues from the passenger service,” he said. “But we do see Blade’s asset-light model as being a valuable one.”
Although Joby does “see opportunities to continue to expand Blade’s existing business, even ahead of certification of our aircraft,” Bevirt said, “that wasn’t the reason for the acquisition. The reason for the acquisition is that the big limitation of that business has been…the sort of vehicles [helicopters] they were using. We think we’ve got an opportunity to both expand the route map, lower cost, or increase margin, and in turn fly higher temporal operations given the lower noise profile of our vehicle.”
In other news discussed during the results call, Joby mentioned the completion of the Marina manufacturing site expansion, now covering 435,000 sq ft. That facility will be able to manufacture 24 aircraft per year. In Dayton, Joby’s manufacturing facility is preparing to support component manufacturing and testing, and eventually it will be able to produce up to 500 aircraft per year.
Flight testing in Dubai included 21 full-transition flights in the third quarter “to validate commercial readiness. The campaign validated several aspects of commercial market readiness in real-world conditions, spanning maintenance, logistics, aircraft capabilities, and infrastructure.”
Joby and <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2025-08-02/joby-and-l3harris-plan-hybrid-vtol-aircraft-defense-missions">L3Harris</a> are developing a hybrid-electric version of the eVTOL aircraft, using a turbine engine as a power source. Flight testing is set to begin in the fourth quarter, with operational demonstrations during government exercises in 2026.
Joby has signed agreements with Saudi Arabian business network Abdul Latif Jameel and Japan’s ANA that “will explore deployment of approximately 300 aircraft.”

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