In a big step toward air taxis transporting passengers across North Texas, Santa Cruz, California-based Joby Aviation has signed a lease for 45,000 square feet at Alliance Air Trade Center in Haslet, part of Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport. The deal gives the electric air taxi developer its first operational base in Texas. It also marks the North Texas launch of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Advanced Air Mobility and Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), announced in March.

Joby said in its second-quarter shareholder letter, released Aug. 5, that it intends to fly piloted routes across the Dallas-Fort Worth area over the course of a week in September. Those would be the company’s first flights anywhere under the eIPP. On the same day’s earnings call, founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said the flights will begin with only Joby pilots on board. Eventually, the company will progress to paying passengers under FAA oversight.

The first-of-its-kind FAA program aims to accelerate the safe integration of next-generation advanced air mobility aircraft into the national airspace and fuel U.S. aviation innovation.

With support from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), Joby is one of four aviation companies selected for the Texas project, along with Archer Aviation, Beta Technologies and Wisk Aero. The project calls for regional flights connecting Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and eventually Houston, with air taxi networks expanding outward from each city.

The pilot projects in Texas and 25 other states “will create one of the largest real-world testing environments for next-generation aircraft in the world,” according to the FAA. The FAA will use data from the projects to write new regulations that safely enable the technology at scale.

Greg Bowles, Joby’s chief policy officer, said he first visited Perot Field two decades ago and that even then it was clear the airport “would grow into a cornerstone of aviation for the region.” Establishing a presence in Texas, he said, puts Joby in one of the most exciting markets in the country.

“This site gives us a base to demonstrate the value of air mobility services across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and the state,” Bowles said in a statement. “Texas is showing strong leadership in advanced air mobility, thanks to partners like Hillwood, TxDOT and NCTCOG, and we look forward to working with them to bring that vision to life as we begin flights under the eIPP program.”

Becoming part of the Mobility Innovation Zone

Hillwood said the location connects Joby with AllianceTexas’ multimodal transportation infrastructure, a regional workforce and a network of public- and private-sector partners working on mobility innovation.

“Welcoming Joby to AllianceTexas reflects our ability to pair flexible real estate solutions with the resources forward-looking companies need to grow,” said Samuel Rhea, vice president at Hillwood. “Joby brings an important new capability and demonstrates how AllianceTexas continues to evolve to support aviation, manufacturing and the advanced air mobility sector.”

Perot Field, which opened in 1989, is the world’s first industrial airport purpose-built for cargo and corporate aviation, according to Hillwood. The developer said AllianceTexas is now home to 602 companies and 73,134 direct jobs. The airport is also a central component of the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone (MIZ), a public-private ecosystem that brings together industry innovators, policymakers and infrastructure partners to advance technologies across air and surface mobility.

“Joby’s presence at Perot Field is a significant milestone for the airport and for North Texas aviation,” said Christopher Ash, president of Alliance Aviation Companies. “By locating within the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone, Joby helps validate the collaborative work happening here and advances the integration of eVTOL technology across the region’s transportation network.”

More on Joby and its North Texas connections

Founded in 2009, Joby Aviation has facilities in San Carlos and Marina, California; Dayton, Ohio; and Munich, Germany. Joby and Toyota announced June 30 that they had formed a joint venture, majority owned by Toyota, to lay the groundwork for commercial manufacturing of eVTOL aircraft. Toyota, which has its North American headquarters in Plano, has committed $894 million to Joby. Joby expects the final $250 million tranche of that commitment to close in the fourth quarter.

Joby has been involved in several North Texas ventures in recent years. The company advanced to crewed flight testing of its eVTOL prototype at the 2023 UP.Summit at Ross Perot Jr.’s Circle T Ranch in Westlake. It also worked with NASA on a 2022 study of air taxi routes between regional vertiports and a 2023 flight simulation that modeled up to 120 air taxi operations an hour in busy Dallas-Fort Worth airspace.

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