Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) has been awarded a Design Organisation Approval (DOA) from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

HAV has previously operated the prototype Airlander under both CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) and EASA permission but the DOA gives HAV the ability to undertake a full flight test programme towards the type certification of Airlander 10.

Nikky Pittkin, HAV Safety & Airworthiness Engineer, said: “As an organisation, we have worked hard to make sure that we were thoroughly prepared for every step of the DOA process. As a result, we have succeeded in securing our DOA. We are working with EASA specialists to establish the certification basis for our aircraft so that we can work towards type certification of Airlander 10.”

Just eight other organisations hold a DOA for type certifying large aircraft, HAV notes.

Coming soon?

HAV expects the type certified production Airlander 10 aircraft to be in service with customers from the early 2020s.

We recently interviewed HAV’s Tom Grundy about the Airlander programme. Watch it again here:

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