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After being the first flying car to get road permission for Europe, Netherlands-based PAL-V is now also the first to complete the full certification basis with European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Based on PAL-V’s 10 years of test results, EASA specialist teams have finalised the requirements for the PAL-V Liberty.

The final phase is compliance demonstration before car flying becomes reality for PAL-V’s customers.

The EASA type certificate is valid for Europe and is also accepted in 80% of the world market, including the U.S. and China.

Robert Dingemanse, PAL-V’s CEO, says: “Getting a flying car to the market is hard. It takes at least 10 years. Although we are experienced entrepreneurs, we learned that in aviation everything is exponentially stricter. Next to the aircraft, all aspects of the organization, including suppliers and maintenance parties must be certified.”

PAL-V Head of Airworthiness, Cees Borsboom, adds: “I’m proud to see the results of our work. 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.”

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 over 1,500 criteria to make it applicable for the PAL-V. 

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