China moves closer to launching flying taxi services as EHang seeks Beijing’s go-ahead

Chinese flying taxi maker EHang has moved a step closer to launching commercial service on the mainland after regulator the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) accepted the firm’s application for an air operator certificate.

Based in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, EHang said in a statement on Monday that the CAAC has started to review its application for a licence to provide domestic air-transport service.

“We are … one step closer to realising our goal of commercially operating unmanned passenger-carrying aerial vehicles, representing the final step for urban air mobility entering the consumer market,” EHang founder, chairman and chief executive Hu Huazhi said in the statement.

Hu said EHang is working closely with the CAAC to establish a new operating system for pilotless aerial vehicles, and that the formal acceptance of the world’s first such operator certificate application has significant implications for the electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) industry.

The CAAC earlier this year granted EHang’s EH216-S the country’s first production certificate for a passenger-transport eVTOL aircraft. The same pilotless aircraft obtained its type and standard airworthiness certificates – both required for commercial operations – from the CAAC last year.