One question surfaces repeatedly when -people ask me about CAAMCI:
When will the aircraft be certified?
The short answer is: we don’t know. That is a question only the FAA and the aircraft manufacturers moving through the certification process can answer.
But I understand why the question matters.
Certification is the culmination of years of aircraft development, testing, safety review, and regulatory work—and a prerequisite for commercial operations. For communities, certification also brings the possibilities of advanced aviation closer to reality: new ways to move people and goods, connect communities, respond to emergencies, and create economic opportunity.
But as those possibilities move closer to reality, another question becomes more urgent:
Are we ready?
The importance of that question was reinforced during a panel at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aviation Forum in San Diego. Convened by Tom Davis of Crown Innovations, Inc., the panel included Kristina Buelo, who leads the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), along with Lisa Abeyta of New Mexico and Josh Duplantis of Louisiana, both representing states participating in the program.
We came to the conversation from different vantage points.
Kristina offered the federal perspective on integrating advanced aircraft safely into the national airspace system. Lisa and Josh shared the experience of states preparing for implementation through the eIPP. I approached the conversation through the lens of CAAMCI and the regional conditions required for implementation.
Yet the conversation kept returning to the same challenge: readiness.
Not just aircraft readiness.
Airport readiness.
Workforce readiness.
Community readiness.
Cross-sector readiness.
Regional readiness.
The conversation sounded familiar because these are the same dimensions of readiness CAAMCI is working to advance.
That does not make certification less important.
It clarifies what certification can—and cannot—do.
Certification can establish that an aircraft is ready to operate.
It cannot create the broader system required to support the operation of certified aircraft—from infrastructure and institutional capacity to workforce and community readiness.
Building that system must begin much earlier.
For CAAMCI, it means connecting the assets and capabilities of four public-use airports as the foundation for a regional system that can expand and inform implementation across California. It means bringing airports, industry, government, education, workforce, utilities, and communities together around the decisions implementation requires. It means identifying infrastructure needs before making investments, understanding the problems advanced aviation might help solve before selecting use cases, and building relationships before operations depend on them.
None of that requires waiting for certification.
In fact, waiting may be the greatest risk.
If regions wait until aircraft are certified to begin building the systems around them, they will be laying the groundwork at the point when they should be ready to move into implementation—leaving little time to align infrastructure, institutions, communities, and investment around emerging operations.
That may be the larger lesson emerging from CAAMCI and from conversations with regions pursuing implementation elsewhere: aircraft readiness must advance alongside community and regional readiness.
Certification provides a defined regulatory pathway for one part of that equation. By contrast, community and regional readiness must be built collectively, across institutions, sectors, and communities that do not operate on a single timeline or answer to a single authority.
The challenge, then, is ensuring that technological progress, community readiness, and regional capacity advance together—so that communities can help shape how advanced aviation is implemented and how its benefits are realized.
Which raises the next question:
What turns innovation into implementation?