Japan Regulators Setting Rules for Flying Cars

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — A year after the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) established its Next Generation Aviation Mobility Planning Office to centrally handle administrative tasks related to next-generation aviation such as drones and eVTOL (flying cars), the first fruits of these efforts are beginning to appear.

The office launched on April 1, 2021, with an inaugural staff of 22 full-time employees.

Its stated goals are to prepare for the start of Level 4 drone flights (beyond visual line of sight in populated areas) later this year, as well as for the launch of the first eVTOL businesses in Japan sometime next year.

This office has been collaborating with other departments, such as the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau’s Aircraft Technology Examination Center, located within Nagoya Airport, which is in charge of the practical testing of next-generation aviation.

On March 25, the Next Generation Aviation Mobility Planning Office published its Test Flight Guidelines for eVTOL.

Manned or unmanned aerial vehicles over 200 grams in weight (over 100 grams from June 20) are subject to the terms of the Civil Aeronautics Act, but an exception is made for indoor flights as well as test flights conducted within spaces which are surrounded by netting, similar to the conditions seen in SkyDrive’s famous manned hover test at the Toyota Test Field in August 2020.

Among the provisions of the Test Flight Guidelines is that a single person needs to be appointed as the overall manager of the test, so the lines of command and responsibility are clear.

The test area should be an open space, with no structures obstructing takeoff, and with reasonable measures taken to prevent third parties from intruding where the aircraft is being tested, such as fences and warning signs.

Special permission from the MLIT is needed to operate in highly populated areas, in emergency airspace, close to airports, at nighttime, and under several other conditions.

Test vehicles which are controlled by remote control need to have various redundancy measures in place to provide back-up options in the case the control link is broken.

In the same way, other provisions of the Test Flight Guidelines appear to be common sense measures to reduce risks of human harm as Japan’s eVTOL industry begins to lift off.