Wisk Aero Flies Second Gen 6 Autonomous Air Taxi, Doubling Certification Test Rate

Wisk Aero flew its second Generation 6 autonomous air taxi for the first time on May 4 at the company’s flight test facility in Hollister, California, bringing the Boeing subsidiary’s active certification test fleet to two aircraft for the first time. The milestone arrives roughly four and a half months after the first Gen 6 aircraft completed its initial hover flight in mid-December 2025, a pace that outstrips what most eVTOL programs have managed between first airframe rollout and a second flying example.

The inaugural flight of the second airframe, registered N607WA, covered vertical takeoff, hover, and chirp maneuvers. A chirp is a controlled frequency-sweep input where oscillations are injected into the flight control system at increasing rates, allowing engineers to map how the aircraft responds across a range of dynamic conditions in a single structured test. It is standard first-flight procedure for fly-by-wire aircraft and tells the flight test team more about structural loads and control law accuracy in one sortie than weeks of qualitative observation could.

Two Aircraft, One Certification Timeline

Having two Gen 6 airframes in simultaneous flight test matters because aircraft certification is fundamentally a data problem. The FAA requires demonstrated evidence across an enormous matrix of conditions: airspeed, altitude, temperature, weight, center of gravity, control surface response, and failure modes. A single-aircraft program addresses that matrix one flight at a time. Two aircraft, potentially flying on the same day in different test configurations, can cut through that matrix faster and allow test campaigns to run in parallel rather than in sequence.

Wisk’s dual-aircraft phase will concentrate on expanding the flight envelope through transitions from hover to wing-borne flight, while continuing to refine the aircraft’s control laws and system performance. The Gen 6 is designed around 12 propellers on a fixed-wing airframe and is built to fly at altitudes between 760 metres (2,500 ft) and 1,220 metres (4,000 ft) at speeds of approximately 160 to 195 kilometres per hour (100 to 120 mph). Range is rated at up to 145 kilometres (90 miles). There is no onboard pilot: a ground-based Multi-Vehicle Supervisor monitors and can intervene during operations.

That autonomy-first architecture makes Wisk’s certification path structurally different from every other funded eVTOL program in the United States. Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, and Beta Technologies are all certifying piloted aircraft where the pilot is part of the safety case. Wisk is asking the FAA to certify an aircraft where the autonomy stack is the safety case. That is a harder regulatory argument, and dual-aircraft testing is part of how Wisk generates the volume of evidence the FAA will need to accept it.

The Texas eIPP Connection

The accelerated flight test cadence runs in parallel with Wisk’s participation in the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP). On March 9, the U.S. Department of Transportation selected the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) as an eIPP participant, with Wisk as the primary private-sector eVTOL partner. As DroneXL reported when the eIPP selections were announced, the program is the first time the FAA has allowed pre-certified eVTOL aircraft to conduct commercial operations in live airspace before type certification clears.

Wisk’s Texas operations will not begin with the Gen 6. As DroneXL’s deeper analysis of the eIPP participants noted, Wisk plans to deploy conventional piloted aircraft on eVTOL routes first, collecting autonomy system data before transitioning to Gen 6 operations. SkyGrid, the airspace management company Wisk acquired last year, will run the digital coordination layer. The sequence is deliberate: Wisk is building an evidence base for autonomous flight through lower-risk piloted operations before it asks regulators to sign off on the pilotless configuration.

Wisk’s Position In The eVTOL Field

Wisk is the only company to have designed, built, and flown six generations of eVTOL aircraft. The company logged more than 1,750 test flights across those six generations before Gen 6 ever left the ground. That heritage is meaningful because it means the control law and structural models that engineers are now validating on Gen 6 were seeded by a decade of real-world data, not solely simulation. The Gen 6 is the first aircraft Wisk has submitted for FAA type certification under a formal certification project, with launch markets identified as Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami.

The contrast with the rest of the field at this moment in May 2026 is worth registering. Joby is flying point-to-point demonstration routes between JFK and Manhattan heliports, generating strong press and real commercial momentum, as DroneXL covered last week. Archer and Beta are progressing through their own certification programs. But none of them are pursuing a fully autonomous passenger aircraft as the primary certification candidate. Wisk’s bet is that autonomy, not a quieter helicopter, is the product that eventually changes aviation economics. That thesis still has to survive the FAA certification process.

DroneXL’s Take

The chirp data from N607WA’s first flight will land in the same validation database that N606WA has been building since December. That is the operational point of this announcement. It is not a milestone in the sense of the aircraft doing something unexpected. It is a milestone in the sense that Wisk now has two flight test assets generating certification evidence simultaneously, and the eIPP Texas operational timeline puts real pressure on the program to mature its autonomy stack in live airspace rather than purely over the Hollister desert.

What I have watched across my reporting on Wisk since the 2023 Oshkosh demonstration is a program that moves methodically rather than for press cycles. The company rarely announces things it has not already done. The December first flight and today’s second-aircraft milestone both followed months of quiet preparation documented in FAA registration records and industry reporting before Wisk issued a press release. That cadence is either the behavior of a team that understands aviation certification’s zero-tolerance relationship with overpromising, or it is the behavior of a Boeing subsidiary that has absorbed Boeing’s institutional caution into how it manages external communication. Probably both.

The open question this announcement does not answer is whether Wisk’s ground-based operator model will clear FAA scrutiny under the same certification timeline the company is building toward. The eIPP participation in Texas provides operational data, but the autonomy certification standard itself does not yet exist in final form. How the FAA structures that standard, and whether the agency’s current posture under the Trump administration accelerates or complicates autonomous-aircraft rulemaking, will determine more about Wisk’s actual commercial timeline than any number of successful chirp maneuvers in Hollister.

Source: Wisk Aero

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.