Westbound: The Aircraft That Built the Texas Corridors Landed in San Diego

Beta's N401NZ flew fourteen legs from New Mexico to Miramar and opened ten facility situations in the San Diego market. In North Carolina the ledger recorded Beta's pilot program six days before the company announced it. Dallas published the one real score move in two weeks, and 22 other numbers changed for a different reason.

Issue 24 closed on a question: where N401NZ goes from Alliance. The answer is west. The ledger lost the aircraft at Alliance on September 10 and found it again at Moriarty, New Mexico on September 17, then followed it across Arizona and the Colorado River into California, one 45 to 108 mile leg at a time, until it landed at Camp Pendleton on September 22 and Miramar on September 23. Those are the first observed eVTOL flights the ledger has ever recorded inside the San Diego market, and the inference layer opened ten situations around them inside two days. The same week, a second Beta aircraft flew a repeating pattern between Raleigh, Greenville, and the Outer Banks that the ledger had been watching since September 14, and on September 23 Beta announced it. Two weeks of scores are in this issue rather than one: Dallas moved on September 14 for a reason the record supports, and 22 markets moved on September 15 for a reason that is a methodology version, not a market. Both are laid out below, along with a market watch change that should not have happened.

What Changed Since Issue 24

Six developments across two weeks, ranked by what the platform can independently verify. Observed means the aircraft broadcast and the ledger holds the track. Published means an audited change to a public number. Announced means a company or a state said it will happen.

Westbound

N401NZ flew its last observed Texas leg on September 8, Waco to Alliance, and a three minute local flight at Alliance on September 10. Then nothing for a week. The ledger records a missing track as unobserved, never as a flight that did not happen, and the next thing it holds is the aircraft leaving Moriarty, New Mexico on September 17 for Grants, 108 miles, and on to Gallup, 55 miles. On September 18 it was at Winslow, Arizona, flew 86 miles to H.A. Clark Memorial Field in Williams, 46 miles to the Madison Aviation Heliport at Tusayan on the South Rim, and came back from Grand Canyon National Park Airport to Williams. On September 19 it flew Williams to Kingman, 99 miles, and Kingman to Lake Havasu City, 53 miles. On September 20 it crossed the Colorado River to Blythe, 69 miles, and continued to Yuma, 67 miles. On September 21 it flew Yuma to Imperial, 58 miles, and Imperial to Ramona, 79 miles, the first endpoint inside the San Diego market.

On September 22 it flew Ramona to Camp Pendleton, 31 miles, a local sortie there, and Camp Pendleton to McClellan-Palomar in Carlsbad, 13 miles. On September 23 it flew Carlsbad to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station and a 19 minute local sortie at Miramar. Fourteen cross field legs in seven days, every one of them inside the 45 to 108 mile shape the aircraft has flown since it left Vancouver in August, and none of the pairs repeated, so none of them carries a corridor identifier. That is what a transit looks like in the ledger, as opposed to a program: a chain of single day pairs that will only become corridors if the aircraft flies them again.

Beta has said nothing about San Diego. The ledger does not need it to. Ramona and Miramar are the two San Diego market endpoints the corridor layer knows, and until September 21 neither had ever recorded an eVTOL movement. The market's observed flight count went from zero to four in three days, and three of the four California fields the aircraft used are military: Yuma, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar are all Marine Corps air stations.

Infrastructure Consequence

The rules that opened four hospital pad situations around Alliance the day N401NZ landed there fired again here, at larger scale, because San Diego has more hospital pads within fifteen miles of its fields than the Alliance area does. On September 23, with the aircraft at Carlsbad, the layer opened three: Pomerado Hospital in Poway, a 48 foot pad 7.5 nautical miles from Ramona, with seven observed flights inside thirty days at three endpoints within fifteen miles; Pat Coyle Memorial in San Marcos, a hospital record on a 26 foot pad the layer suspects is mislocated, now with eight flights nearby; and a utility pad at San Onofre near San Clemente, another suspect record, 11 miles from Camp Pendleton.

On September 24, with the aircraft at Miramar, it opened seven more. Five are hospital pads on record under the 50 foot eVTOL landing floor within seven miles of the field, each citing the same three flights at Miramar inside thirty days: UCSD Jacobs Medical Center rooftop in La Jolla at 48 feet, Sharp Memorial at 40, the Rady Children's cul de sac pad at 40, Scripps Memorial Encinitas at 44, and UCSD Medical Center Hillcrest at 45. The main Rady Children's Hospital record and the San Diego Police Headquarters pad were flagged as records the layer suspects are mislocated, now with traffic nearby. Ten situations in two days, all in a tracked market, all from three flights at one field and two at another. Hillcrest already held a second situation from September 20, an adverse FAA determination on a case 0.9 nautical miles away that also touched Scripps Mercy and the Coast Guard station.

San Diego scores 39 and did not move. The classifier refuses credit for a transit unless the source names a designated program, and the observed ledger does not feed the score directly. What the ledger does feed is the facility record, and the facility record now says that the pads a medical operator would want first in this market are mostly under the floor, and that the aircraft has arrived anyway.

North Carolina, Observed Before Announced

N214BT, the Beta CX300 that came back from fourteen months in Europe, left Frederick, Maryland on September 10 and worked south through Martinsburg, Charlottesville, the Shenandoah Valley, Lewisburg, and Blacksburg. On September 14 it flew Blacksburg to Greensboro, 81 miles, and Greensboro to Raleigh Executive Jetport in Sanford, North Carolina, 59 miles, and started flying local sorties there: one that day, four on September 15, four on September 16. On September 17 it flew Raleigh Executive to Pitt-Greenville, 97 miles, and Pitt-Greenville to Dare County Regional Airport at Manteo on the Outer Banks, another 97 miles.

Then it repeated the shape. Dare County to Greenville and back on September 18 and 19, Greenville to Johnston Regional at Smithfield and on to Raleigh Executive on September 19, Raleigh Executive to Greenville to Dare County to Greenville to Raleigh Executive on September 20, Raleigh Executive to Greenville and back on September 21, and three local flights plus a leg to Raleigh-Durham International on September 23. Dare County to Pitt-Greenville crossed the two day line on September 19 and carries an identifier: six legs over four days. Pitt-Greenville to Raleigh Executive crossed it on September 21: five legs over three days. Nineteen legs this week, all in North Carolina, on 97 mile pairs flown to within a few minutes of each other.

On September 23 Beta announced North Carolina eIPP operations under the state's eLIFT-NC program, with ECU Health and WakeMed as partners, the three airports the ledger had already recorded as the network, simulated medical supply deliveries between regional medical centers and rural community hospitals, and a campaign of more than 1,300 nautical miles. The release says operations began September 17. The ledger agrees, and it also holds the three days of positioning at Raleigh Executive before that. The corridor records were minted two and four days before the announcement. On September 19 the inference layer flagged the McGee pad in Greenville as a record it suspects is mislocated, with fourteen flights at Pitt-Greenville inside thirty days. None of this sits in a tracked market; Charlotte is the North Carolina market the scoreboard carries, and the news layer mapped both the Beta release and a state item on the program to Charlotte, where they sit at the gate. The engine did not need the market, and it did not need the press release.

Dallas: The Joby Pair, and the Score

Issue 24 said the first thing to watch was a Joby leg from Alliance to a second airport in the Dallas area. On September 12 N545JX flew Alliance to DFW International, the Dallas hub, 18 miles in 11 minutes, and back in 18. On September 13 it did it again, 13 minutes out and 26 back. Four legs on two days, and on September 14 the pair received an identifier. It is the first Joby corridor in Texas and the first in the ledger between a general aviation field and a major hub. The aircraft has not been observed since, and N401NZ had already left. Texas, which produced the corridor evidence of the last three issues, recorded no observed eVTOL flight between September 18 and 23. Twelve flights touched Alliance in the last thirty days; all of them are older than September 14.

Dallas moved from 64 to 71 on September 14. The move published because two things changed in the record. The operator record for Joby in Dallas was corrected to a testing stage on the strength of the company's state pilot program release and the observed Alliance movements, which lifted the operator pillar; and the momentum modulator read the same coverage and lifted the score by about five points, the larger and less durable part of the move, since momentum decays as coverage ages. The landing pillar moved a fraction. The score had been staged above 64 for weeks and held by the materiality gate; the correction is what carried it across. Dallas now sits at 72 after the September 15 restatement, level with Miami, four behind Los Angeles.

Two Weeks of Scores, and a Version

Readers comparing this issue with Issue 24 will see different numbers on most markets, and only one of them is a market move. On September 15 AirIndex moved market scoring to version 2.1 and republished every market under it, because a methodology change is itself a recorded event. The weights, pillars, tiers, and formula did not change. What changed is how activity is counted: one story counts once rather than every syndicated copy of it; activity is dated by its source rather than by the day AirIndex processed it; events reviewed and rejected as false positives no longer add to momentum; and operator news counts once per story in markets with no operator on record. Most markets moved down by a few points as repeated and outdated activity fell away. Columbus went from 39 to 28, New York from 49 to 42, Phoenix from 49 to 45. Los Angeles went up, 72 to 76, and Miami 70 to 72, because their activity was more distinct than the old count made it look. Three markets did not move at all. None of the 22 restated markets did anything to earn its new number, and each restatement is filed in the change record as a methodology update, not a score change, with the prior version and its hash kept on the methodology page.

On September 16 AirIndex moved to scoring v2.2 and no score changed. The version fixes what an unreadable pillar means: a market whose landing stock cannot be assessed used to score zero, the same figure a market earns when every site it has is assessed and none of them work. From v2.2 a pillar we cannot read makes the score unpublishable, the market holds its previous published score, and the gap is recorded rather than filled. No market is affected today; the rule was corrected before it was needed. Published scores keep their v2.1 stamp until each market's next material move, because republishing to change a label would have pushed three held sub threshold moves live, and that is exactly what the gate exists to prevent.

A Watch That Should Not Have Moved

On Monday morning the watch derivation moved Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego to positive watch with an improving outlook, and the badges are on the site and in the table below this morning. The record behind all three is the same one: California AB 2113, chaptered on September 20, which makes it an infraction to fly a drone within 400 feet of a ticketed outdoor entertainment event or an amusement park. It is an unmanned aircraft statute. It says nothing about passenger aircraft, vertiports, or air taxi operations, and it should not have moved a market watch. The classifier read a signed state aviation bill as a categorical positive event, which is the rule as written, and the rule as written does not distinguish a drone restriction from an air mobility statute. That is a defect in the rule, not in the record, and it is disclosed here rather than quietly reversed: the three watches will be reset, and the rule tightened so a drone statute cannot pass as an air mobility signal. Until the reset lands, treat the three positive watch badges as noise. Nothing in the three markets changed on Monday except the badge.

Observed, Confirmed, Announced

Archer, observed and announced. N703AX flew a 20 minute local flight at Salinas on September 22 and Salinas to Hollister and back on September 23, 19 miles each way, the third separate day on that pair, which was minted on September 11. On September 22 Archer said its Midnight will fly at the California International Air Show in Salinas as part of the No Roads tour. The news layer mapped that to San Diego at medium confidence, which is where the tour is headed rather than where the show is; it sits at the gate. The Los Angeles area, Texas, and Florida stops Archer described are not in the record.

Joby, observed. Five local sorties by N542JX at Marina on September 22 and 23, between 3 and 17 minutes. Nothing in Texas since the Alliance to DFW pair on September 13, and nothing from the autonomous aircraft tour the company announced; the two tour items the classifier could not place were held back.

Texas, announced. The state transportation department said on September 13 that air taxis begin flying in Texas this fall; the federal transportation secretary marked the launch of the federal pilot program in Texas on September 11; and on September 21 the state announced a statewide electric air taxi test program it calls Project Nexus. The news layer mapped all three to San Antonio, and two of them were held back as duplicates of what the ledger already published for Dallas. The observed count for Texas this week is zero. A missing track is not proof an aircraft did not fly, and the standing caveat below applies, but the announcements now run ahead of the ledger, which two weeks ago ran ahead of the announcements.

The gate. Eight items sit at the gate this morning: Beta's North Carolina launch and the state's program item, both for Charlotte; the Archer air show item for San Diego; the federal pilot program launch for San Antonio; an Arizona legislative demonstration item for Phoenix; and three older items, Joby's Austin facility, Joby's Vandalia acquisition for Columbus, and a Dallas vertiport item. Six items were held back this week and fourteen the week before. Nothing confirmed by a federal source this week carried a track, and nothing observed this week has been confirmed by one, which is the same sentence Issue 24 ended on. In Phoenix, one crane case at 197 feet opened construction pressure situations at four pads on September 22; none has traffic.

The Weekly Operating Board

Observed flights cover September 18 through September 23 as the ledger stood this morning; September 24 had not yet backfilled. Counts backfill for about a day, and the two prior weeks now read higher than they did when published.

The standing caveat applies. Observed flight is a floor, never a census. Experimental aircraft may legally fly without broadcasting, and a missing track is recorded as unobserved, never as proof an aircraft did not fly.

Markets to Watch This Week

Top three by predictive significance, from the AirIndex Forward Signals pipeline as of September 25. Scores are the September 15 restatements. Dallas leads on raw signal volume, 145 in thirty days, and Houston is third; the three below rank ahead of them on what the signals project.

See full ranked digest →

What to Watch Next Week

• A second day on any San Diego pair. Ramona, Camp Pendleton, Carlsbad, and Miramar are single day legs; one repeat mints the first corridor identifier in the market. A leg north toward Los Angeles would say the transit is not over.
• Whether the North Carolina pattern holds a third week now that it is announced, and whether the Charlotte items publish. The ledger will show the first; the gate will show the second.
• Any observed flight in Texas. Three state and federal announcements landed in a week the ledger recorded none, and Joby's N545JX has not broadcast since September 13.
• The reset of the three California watches and the rule change behind it. Both will appear in the change record when they land.

UAM Market Pulse is a weekly intelligence digest from AirIndex. Observed flights come from the AirIndex eVTOL movement ledger, built on FAA registry data and public ADS-B broadcasts. Forward signals are derived from the AirIndex Forward Signals pipeline aggregating classifier outputs, MarketWatch trajectory, and predevelopment facility milestones.

AirIndex · UAM Market Readiness Intelligence · airindex.io