Flying taxis just began federal test flights across four North Carolina airports

Electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft began federal test flights this week across four North Carolina airports, part of a Federal Aviation Administration pilot program that U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy formally celebrated on September 23, 2026. The four sites are Dare County Regional Airport on the state’s coast, Raleigh-Durham International Airport, Raleigh Executive Jetport, and Pitt-Greenville Airport, and the flights are already generating enough regulatory data that officials framed the launch as a milestone rather than a ceremonial kickoff.

BETA Technologies, one of the manufacturers flying under the program, had completed more than 16 medical and disaster-response missions in a single week by the time the FAA marked the occasion, according to the agency’s own newsroom release. That volume of flights in such a short window is unusual for an aircraft category still working toward full FAA certification, and it is the detail state and federal officials pointed to as evidence the program is producing more than demonstration flights.

North Carolina’s program traces back to a March selection

The North Carolina effort, known internally as eLIFT-NC, is the state’s piece of the FAA’s national Advanced Air Mobility Integration Pilot Program, sometimes shortened to eIPP. According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s announcement from March, the state was selected to build a network of electric air taxis intended to link hospitals, airports, and rural communities that otherwise depend on longer ground transport for medical care. Julie White, the department’s deputy secretary for multimodal transportation, said at the time that North Carolina was ready to turn next-generation aircraft into real-world solutions for the state’s communities, a framing state officials have repeated as flights moved from planning into the current test phase.

Two manufacturers are flying under the North Carolina program: Joby Aviation, whose J208 aircraft is being tested as a remotely piloted eVTOL, and BETA Technologies, which is flying its ALIA aircraft on fixed-wing electric routes rather than pure vertical-lift profiles. Metro Aviation, a helicopter-services operator with long experience in medical transport, is also named in the FAA’s release as a program partner helping integrate the new aircraft into existing air-ambulance operations.

BETA’s missions connected coastal and inland sites

BETA’s own account of its operations, published the same day as the FAA’s celebration, said the company flew more than 1,300 nautical miles connecting Raleigh Executive Jetport, Pitt-Greenville Airport, and Dare County Regional Airport, carrying a mobile field medical station and supplies along what BETA CEO Kyle Clark described as “a route connecting the Research Triangle to North Carolina’s coast.” The company said it worked with ECU Health and WakeMed, two regional health systems, to test how electric aircraft could extend medical-supply delivery into areas that current ground and helicopter networks serve less efficiently. Coverage from Aerospace Manufacturing and Design added that the flights also included a symbolic flyover of the Wright Brothers National Memorial on the Outer Banks, tying the state’s aviation history to the current test program.

Charging infrastructure has been in place at Raleigh Executive Jetport since 2024, when BETA installed one of its Charge Cube stations there, and the company said more than 15 additional charging sites are now in development across the state to support an expanded route network. That build-out matters because electric aircraft cannot simply refuel at any airport the way a piston or turbine aircraft can; without a charger compatible with BETA’s aircraft, a route is not actually flyable regardless of how much airspace clearance the FAA grants it. BETA has described North Carolina as one of the more advanced sites in a federal program that spans multiple states, noting it participates in seven of the eight nationwide eIPP pilot locations the FAA has stood up.

Officials framed the flights as a regulatory proving ground

Duffy’s statement, carried in the FAA’s newsroom release, credited the administration with “unlocking the future of flight, one test flight at a time.” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford called integrating the new aircraft into national airspace “an exciting step,” saying the North Carolina demonstrations help the agency ensure that integration happens safely, as it works toward broader rules for how eVTOL aircraft share airspace with conventional planes and helicopters.

That regulatory goal is the practical reason the program exists in its current form: every flight logged across the four airports generates data the FAA can use to write certification and operating standards that do not yet exist for this aircraft category. Coverage of the state’s selection in the Carolina Journal similarly framed the program’s rural health care angle as the strongest justification for moving fast on the testing, since North Carolina’s rural hospital access has been a persistent policy concern independent of the aviation technology itself.

Whether the program expands beyond its current four North Carolina sites, or beyond the seven other states hosting parallel eIPP tests nationally, depends on how the FAA and NCDOT interpret the data BETA and Joby generate in the coming months. For now, the more than 16 missions BETA logged in a single week stand as the concrete measure both agencies pointed to when they marked the program’s move from selection to active flight.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview