Joby Flies the 1914 Tampa Bay Airline Route to Open Florida Air Taxi Trials, Still Without a Fare or Launch Date
On January 1, 1914, Tony Jannus flew former St. Petersburg mayor Abe Pheil across Tampa Bay in a flying boat. It was the world’s first scheduled commercial airline flight. On Friday, Joby Aviation flew the same crossing in its electric air taxi, from Albert Whitted Airport in downtown St. Petersburg to Tampa International, to open a week of piloted flights across Florida.
The flights run with the Florida Department of Transportation under the federal eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, or eIPP, which the US Department of Transportation announced in March. FDOT’s project was one of eight picked nationwide and is planned in three phases, covering passenger flights, cargo, automation and medical response. BETA Technologies also flew in Florida’s first round of demonstrations.
Three hubs in one week
After Tampa Bay the aircraft heads to Orlando International Airport, where it lands at a new vertiport near Terminal C and the airport’s train station. The routes and procedures there came out of two years of simulation with the FAA, NASA, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority and Orlando’s air traffic controllers. The last stop is the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center during the UP.Summit. Weather can move the dates.
Those three points are the first planned hubs of Florida’s Aerial Highway Network, the state’s plan for an intercity air taxi system. Florida has been putting money behind it. FDOT has run advanced air mobility planning since 2021. In April, Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1093, which lets FDOT fund vertiports statewide. FDOT is also building SunTrax Air off Interstate 4, a test campus with what it calls the country’s first dedicated aerial test track for these aircraft, with testing due to start by the end of 2026.
Joby’s aircraft carries a pilot and four passengers, with a top speed of about 200 mph and a range of about 100 miles. That’s the right size for Tampa to Orlando, roughly 85 miles that can take two hours on I-4 on a bad day.
What’s still missing
Florida is the last stop on Joby’s Electric Skies tour, after the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and Dallas-Fort Worth. Each stop has produced good pictures and useful data for the FAA on airport integration, noise and vertiport procedures. None has produced a ticket.
Joby said in August that it was targeting its first passengers in 2026. With two months of the year left, it has published no fare and no booking date for Tampa Bay or anywhere else in Florida. The company says it’s in the final stages of FAA type certification.
It does have a foothold. Blade, Joby’s wholly owned subsidiary, has flown passengers between the New York area and South Florida since 2015 and relaunches its BLADEone jet service to Miami and Palm Beach in November with private jet airline Aero. That gives Joby customers and ground infrastructure in the state before it has an electric aircraft to put them on.
Florida has done its part: the law, the money, the test track. The next move is Joby’s. If the 2026 passenger target still holds, its next quarterly report is where it should name a first city and a price.