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Boeing's eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) air taxi unit Wisk Aero believes it has made a breakthrough in testing that it is conducting with NASA under a five-year Space Act agreement.
Wisk said Wednesday that it simulated the simultaneous orchestration of three uncrewed aircraft, alongside regular air traffic, by a single ground-based supervisor. For autonomous models like Wisk's Generation 6 air taxi, the ability for one person to remotely oversee multiple aircraft is considered the unlock for operations at scale.
However, with limited exceptions, the FAA does not permit operators to fly multiple small drones at once, let alone uncrewed aircraft that are designed to carry passengers. The Gen 6 lacks pilot controls but has four passenger seats.
Wisk is the only American eVTOL developer that plans to integrate autonomy at launch. But others, including Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, and Beta Technologies, view autonomous systems as critical to growing beyond a handful of daily operations.
Wisk's Generation 6, a prototype of which made its first flight in December, is designed to coordinate with what the company calls multi-vehicle supervisors (MVSors). These personnel would oversee operations remotely and step in should the air taxi deviate from its predefined route.
"This is an incredible milestone for Wisk as it's the first time we've successfully tested our 1:3 supervisor-to-aircraft ratio with NASA in a high-fidelity, high-workload environment that mirrors the complexity of the NAS," said Erick Corona, who heads system and operations integration for Wisk, in a statement.
The company's Space Act agreement, awarded last year, is intended to study autonomous aircraft operations in the national airspace system (NAS) under IFR. Eventually, it is expected to combine actual flights with simulated airspace in NASA's Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) flight environment, which can layer live or historical NAS traffic over real-world aircraft.
Goals of the collaboration include the development of standards for airspace and route design, aircraft and ground safety, and air traffic control (ATC) communications with uncrewed aircraft.
Three For One
Wisk said its Autonomy Lab in Mountain View, California, where the company studies human supervisors' interactions with the Gen 6's automated systems, was connected to ATC simulation laboratories at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.
The partners used the NASA facilities, which can create full-scale, 360-degree simulations of the airport environment, to follow predetermined IFR routes between Moffett Federal Airfield (KNUQ) and San Martin Airport (E16) in California's San Francisco Bay Area. Wisk said its supervisors used the company's remote supervision system and autonomous systems to communicate with ATCs, who relied on existing tools and procedures.
The researchers studied communication response times, task latency, situational awareness, and cognitive workload across both nominal and worst-case scenarios developed by NASA and Wisk.
"Proving that a single ground-based supervisor can manage multiple flights safely and efficiently is paramount to making commercial air taxi operations scalable and affordable,” said Wisk’s Corona.
Wisk said data and learnings from the simulation campaign could help to standardize communications and procedural frameworks designed to reduce ATC and pilot workload. It may also advance the company's vision for automated flight rules (AFR), a proposed policy framework that would define the role of its multi-vehicle supervisors.
"AFR is designed to complement, not replace, VFR and IFR, and to be available to any properly equipped airspace user," Wisk wrote in a February blog post. "Whereas VFR and IFR rely on pilot visual awareness and ATC-provided services to keep aircraft safely separated, AFR will allow aircraft to use automation to perform conflict management functions."
What's Next?
Wisk's collaboration with NASA could produce tangible results.
The space agency's UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project led directly to the FAA's development of the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) for drone operations. The UTM team also devised the air traffic management framework that the FAA is using to facilitate drone operations in Dallas-Fort Worth. The city is the first to allow multiple operators to share airspace and fly beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of personnel.
Kurt Swieringa, deputy manager for technology for NASA's Air Traffic Management Exploration (ATM-X) project, told FLYING last year that his unit was shaping a version of the Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) that can accommodate uncrewed aircraft.
NASA researchers have tested digitized communications between ATC and the flight deck and conducted many remotely piloted flights. They have also studied air taxi noise, traffic, ride quality, and crash scenarios. The space agency shares these findings with the FAA to inform new regulations that could unlock commercial service for Wisk, Joby, Archer, Beta, and more.
Unlike competitors, Wisk's Gen 6 will be autonomous from the get-go and could benefit the most from NASA's work.
"I think there's a hurdle of integrating an eVTOL into the airspace, and then there's the autonomous piece," said Cindy Comer, Wisk's vice president of SMS, safety, and quality, in a Q&A that appeared in the March 2026 issue of FLYING. "How do we best engage with air traffic control so that we don't increase their workload, but they're aware and engaged in our flights as much as they need to be?"
Per Comer, the Gen 6 uses a combination of computers, predictive hardware and software, radar, sensors, and ground links to detect and avoid other aircraft on its own. Many of its systems are present on transport-category aircraft such as the Boeing 737 or Airbus A350.
Wisk is even providing autonomous systems for future variants of Archer's Midnight air taxi, and Comer left the door open when asked if the company could sell them to other rivals. Should they adopt Wisk's autonomy, those competitors could rely on the same multi-vehicle supervisor framework that it and NASA are studying.
Of course, the partners will eventually need to validate the strategy with real flying.
Wisk's first Gen 6 prototype was joined by a second in May. Though it did not fly them during the recent NASA campaign, Wisk hopes to debut the prototypes publicly by the end of the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP). The multiyear program will see Wisk work with the Texas Department of Transportation toward high-frequency Gen 6 flights.
Dan Dalton, Wisk's vice president of commercialization and airline development, told FLYING in March that the FAA during the eIPP may even permit passenger carrying operations for revenue.
The eIPP kicked off last week with organ delivery flights completed by Beta's all-electric Alia CX300. Activities under the multiyear program are expected to grow increasingly complex.
