ADVANCED AIR MOBILITY REALITY INDEX

The Vertical Flight Society counts over 1,000 entrants in the AAM industry with new ones added on a weekly basis. OEMs have also attracted significant investment from venture capital, private equity, SPACs, automotive companies, legacy aerospace OEMs and tech companies. However, mixed with the excitement that welcomes every new industry, there is a significant amount of healthy skepticism.  With all these entrants and all the interest in the industry, how can companies, suppliers, investors easily understand what companies will come to lead the industry, and which ones will not be as successful as they hoped to be? How “real” is the commitment of a legacy company or a startup to deliver a product to market?

The ARI is a rating tool, based on a proprietary formula that uses publicly available information as well as expert knowledge. It helps assess the industry entrants’ progress toward the delivery of a certified product at mass scale production. While at launch 14 OEMs were rated, the tool is periodically updated to include new entrants as well as any new information on existing entrants. The tool is un-biased and data-based. It is not meant as an endorsement or a critique of any specific company, but as a simple, easy-to-use guide to the complexities of the AAM industry.

The ARI is based on five elements: the funding received by the company, the team that leads the company, the technology readiness of their vehicles, the certification progress of their vehicles, and the production readiness towards full scale manufacturing. 

The formula scores each entrant on a 0 to 10 scale. We use one decimal point as well to distinguish entrants, as there is clustering at specific stages in the product lifecycle. A 0 on the ARI tool represents a company just considering the market with little to no financing. A 10 on the ARI tool represents a company with a commercial product that is produced in thousands of units per year. No company at present would be able to achieve a 10, as no one in Aerospace is capable to produce thousands of vehicles per year.

The ARI describes the likelihood of an OEM certifying their aircraft, entering service and producing it in thousand of units per year.

The ARI does not rate which OEM is first in the progress to first flight, EIS or certification. 

The ARI takes into consideration OEMs developing all-new eVTOL and eSTOL manned/autonomous passenger and manned cargo aircraft and eCTOL passenger aircraft with 6 or more seats. OEMs developing autonomous cargo UAVs with a payload of 500 lb. and above are ranked in a separate AAM Reality Index dedicated to this type of vehicles.

We decided to rank autonomous cargo UAVs in their own AAM Reality Index due to the difference in certification regulations with the other AAM vehicles and to properly track the progress of this type of vehicles as it might diverge from their piloted passenger versions (i.e. AutoFlight CarryAll autonomous cargo UAV and AutoFlight Prosperity I piloted passenger eVTOL).

This index also displays different fields than the original AAM Reality Index:

• The fields indicating the use case (i.e. cargo) and the vehicle operation (i.e. autonomous) have been deleted as the index only ranks autonomous cargo UAVs
• A new field name certification has been added to take into account that an autonomous cargo UAV could enter service before receiving certification from the regulator

The field with the arrows shows the rating change for each listed OEM since the last release of the ARI:

• Up arrow (↑): ARI rating increased
• Down arrow (↓): ARI rating decreased
• Sideways arrow (↔︎): no ARI rating change
• New: OEM added in the current ARI release 

The field reports the up-to-date cash funding in millions of USD received by the OEMs at the time of the index release publication. "Corporate backed" indicates internal funding. "Corporate backed*" indicates a mix of internal funding and outside investors. The same information is also available in graphical form in the AAM FUNDING infographic.

SPAC related funding, that appears only in the AAM FUNDING infographic, is OEM forecasted at closing of the transaction and it includes PIPE, cash held in trust and transaction costs.

The use case represents the mission the OEM foresees for the vehicles they are developing. We also group the OEMs by their main use case in the "ARI BY USE CASE" section.

The field describes what type of  configuration the vehicle or vehicles adopt.

It details the vehicles the OEM is developing.

The first flight field reports the year in which the latest vehicle version has first flown. The EIS field reports the OEM announced entry into service year.

It reports the certification regulatory agency that oversees the initial certification process for the OEM vehicles. 

The ARI is updated on a regular basis and it also appears, together with the infographics, in Aviation Week's AAM Report. We document the changes in blog posts that detail the updates. We also notify the industry through LinkedIn and Twitter. We advise our visitors to bookmark this page. 

To make it easy to identify the AAM vehicles in the hero image, we have added an interactive image below. Hover over or touch the vehicle of interest to learn about the OEM, the aircraft name and dimensions (the dimensions in cruise flight are estimated in meters (m), starting from the publicly available data, unless provided by the OEM).

All hero images on the website have been commissioned to talented aviation illustrations’ artist Marc Philipp Veenendaal (Instagram @marc_mpv).