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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Matt Thurber

Joby Aviation’s stock price climbed 8% this morning after the company reported its second-quarter financial summary yesterday. The eVTOL manufacturer’s second-quarter 2026 revenue was $38.6 million, and net loss was $245.4 million.
Contributing to the net loss was a $58.3 million increase in research and development costs, “reflecting continued investment to support certification and manufacturing readiness, and a $45.1 million increase in selling, general, and administrative expenses,” according to Joby. The second-quarter net loss was $135.5 million more than the $110 million net loss in the first quarter.
Joby ended the quarter with $2.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and investments in marketable securities. It has increased its full-year 2026 total revenue outlook from $115 million to $125 million.
During the earnings call, Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said, “We’re now at the point where we’re preparing for commercial service.” Joby is flying five eVTOLs, one of which is the company’s first to conform to anticipated FAA certification requirements. Twelve aircraft are in production—an additional four from the first quarter—and Joby expects to deliver two this year.
“We made our strongest progress yet in the fifth and final stage of type certification,” according to the earnings letter to shareholders. Joby has completed the first four stages in the certification process and is now pursuing completion of the fifth stage, which it terms “show and verify.” According to Joby, as of July 31, it had completed 20% of this stage, while the FAA had completed 10% of its work on Stage 5.
Joby has not released much in the way of performance specifications for its eVTOL, other than that it can cruise up to 200 mph and recharge batteries for a 10-minute flight in the time it takes to unload and load passengers. Joby has not revealed projected maximum takeoff weight, payload, useful load, endurance, range, or cost of operation numbers.&nbsp;
According to Bevirt, in September, Joby plans to fly its first flights under the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) in Texas. This will include routes in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, which “lay the groundwork for future commercial operations,” he said. “These vertical takeoff and landing flights will demonstrate how our aircraft can transform travel across a major metropolitan area. Over time, and with extensive involvement and oversight from the FAA, we expect flights under the eIPP program to progress from those with only a pilot on board to those carrying non-paying passengers and eventually paying passengers.” He did not elaborate on whether Joby’s aircraft will need to be FAA certified before carrying paying passengers, and the eIPP itself is not clear on this distinction.
“The eIPP is focused on informing standards and future policy development and is not a mechanism to bypass certification requirements,” according to the FAA. “Aircraft included in the partnership must already be going through the FAA’s formal type certification process.”
The goals of the eIPP are to: “Accelerate the safe and efficient integration of eVTOL and other AAM operations within the NAS [national airspace system]; generate data to inform the FAA’s development of guidance and regulations; foster and leverage public-private partnerships; and provide opportunities to accelerate commercial-use operations.”
Since Joby purchased the Blade helicopter charter brokerage service last year, “The business continues to grow quarter on quarter,” Bevirt said, “so much so that the core constraint we’re facing on many routes is now aircraft availability rather than passenger demand.” Blade’s seats sold climbed more than 50% in the second quarter year over year. “This quarter also saw the highest number of new flyers going to and from New York City airports since 2023,” he added, “while route expansions contributed to more than 40% year-on-year growth in Hamptons revenue…The last quarter was so strong, in fact, that today I’m pleased to confirm that we are raising our full-year revenue guidance after Blade’s revenue grew 32% year-on-year in the first half.
“Vertical takeoff and landing has been our north star at Joby since day one, and our experience integrating Blade over the past year has only reinforced how central it is to the customer experience. Flying between airports is something aviation has done successfully for a long time. The real opportunity comes from taking customers from where they begin their journeys to where they want to go, saving them the time and friction of traveling through an airport. Blade’s experience with the New York to Hamptons service brings this point to life. Customers can book a conventional fixed-wing aircraft from Teterboro to Montauk today for roughly one-third of the price of a helicopter flight from Manhattan, and yet utilization of the helicopter service remains significantly higher. That tells us just how much customers value the time savings and convenience of beginning their journey in the city and avoiding the airport altogether. Being able to take off vertically is a fundamental part of what drives Blade’s success today, and we believe the opportunity becomes even greater with the introduction of the Joby aircraft, which is quieter, less expensive to operate, and designed specifically for journeys like these.”
Joby did not provide any guidance on the expected FAA certification timeline for its eVTOL aircraft. According to a spokesman, “Joby pilots will complete envelope&nbsp;expansion and the full set of required test points on an FAA-conforming aircraft before FAA pilots repeat those tests as part of the formal TIA [type inspection authorization] process. That work is progressing at pace.”
Given the low rate of aircraft production during 2026, Joby is working on improving manufacturing processes. “Building conforming aircraft represents a step change in complexity,” Bevirt said. “We are putting in the hard miles now, so that we’re ready to make the most of all of the opportunities I’ve just described. Over the last quarter, we’ve worked tirelessly to remove bottlenecks and improve processes. During the first six months of this year, as just one example, we reduced the non-conformance rate in our manufacturing processes by nearly 40%. This represents excellent progress as we move from R&amp;D builds to low-rate production.”
Joby also entered into a joint venture with Toyota during the second quarter, which, he added, “lays the groundwork for high-volume commercial production, helping to significantly reduce the risk of one of the greatest challenges ahead of us.”
A senior Toyota manufacturing leader will soon join the Joby team at its Marina, California factory. “By investing together in the people, facilities, and systems required for production, we will create a more capital-efficient path to scale, and a manufacturing system designed from the outset to deliver exceptional quality and consistency at volume,” Bevirt said.
On August 4, Joby unveiled a partnership with Atoms to develop vertiport sites in the U.S., focusing initially in California and locations where Joby plans to operate eIPP flights in Florida, New York, and Texas. Atoms was founded by Travis Kalanick, who launched the Uber ridesharing system.
Under the partnership, vertiports will serve aircraft, as well as autonomous ground vehicles and ridesharing cars. “The hubs will enable passenger connections, aircraft servicing, and last-mile ground transportation,” according to Joby.
“Smart cities require innovative real estate and infrastructure development," said Atoms CEO Kalanick. “As new transport modes and smart city services become available, designing and deploying a new asset class to support them is critical. We’re focused on serving city stakeholders with inspired, efficient buildouts that deliver great experiences for residents and communities alike.”
“I’d like to end where I started, with the eIPP program. As I’ve said, the program promises to be an important opportunity to accelerate commercialization, and a critical part of that will be the safe and effective integration of our aircraft into the national airspace. In April, we announced a partnership with ASI [Air Space Intelligence], focused on this work, and I’d like to congratulate ASI on being recently selected by the FAA to provide the central software infrastructure for managing traffic across the U.S. national airspace system.
“ASI is effectively building an operating system for airspace, the invisible infrastructure that will allow us to scale access to our skies. It’s an honor to be partnered with them, and we look forward to collaborating on airspace integration as part of our eIPP work. It’s incredibly exciting to see all of these pieces coming together, and I hope everything we’ve shared today gives you a real sense of just how close we are and how ready we are for commercialization. We’re building the infrastructure, we’re building the aircraft, we’re building the customer base, and we’re building our operational experience.”

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