PAL-V has completed the full certification basis with EASA for its flying car, the PAL-V Liberty. The requirements were finalised by EASA’s specialist teams, based on a decade of PAL-V’s test results. The vehicle has already received road permission for Europe.
The company said the issuance, made after industry consultation, showed the confidence of the European authorities and the maturity of the design and the company. The final phase, before car flying becomes a reality for PAL-V’s customers, is compliance demonstration.
“Getting a flying car to the market is hard; it takes at least 10 years”, said Robert Dingemanse, CEO at PAL-V. “Although we are experienced entrepreneurs, we learned that in aviation everything is exponentially stricter. Next to the aircraft, all aspects of the organisation, including suppliers and maintenance parties, must be certified.”
In 2009 PAL-V agreed with EASA to use the Certification Specifications for Small Rotorcraft, CS-27, as a starting point for the development of the certification basis. PAL-V worked together with EASA to amend the complete list of more than 1,500 criteria to make it applicable for the PAL-V. The list was published in 2020 for review by industry experts and the final version has just been published.
“Safety is key in developing the Liberty; we are privileged to work with top experts of EASA,” said Mike Stekelenburg, CTO at PAL-V. “Their high safety standards also allow the Liberty to be used professionally. From the start, we built the Liberty to comply with existing regulations. This strategy provides the fastest route to market.”
“I’m proud to see the results of our work,” said Cees Borsboom, head of airworthiness at PAL-V. “We can now speed up the completion of the compliance demonstration phase. It’s hard to grasp the amount of work required to certify an aircraft. The sign-off of 1,500 requirements already in 2012, before starting manned test flights, was the beginning. The development of the requirements started in 2009. More than 10 years of analysis, test data, flight tests and drive tests led to this important milestone. In parallel, we already started compliance demonstration to obtain the type certificate, which will be followed by delivery of vehicles to our customers.”
The EASA type certificate is valid for Europe and is also accepted in 80% of the world market, including the USA and China.
