The top three leaders from the US Air Force watched an eVTOL aircraft in flight on Friday, when LIFT Aircraft CEO and Founder Matt Chasen gave a demonstration of the company’s single-seat ultralight, HEXA.
As reported by the Vertical Flight Society’s Electric VTOL News, the four-minute flight took place at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas and included hovers, turns and forward flights — with the aircraft remaining 40ft (12 metres) off the ground.
The event coincided with a visit to the Air Force’s Innovation Hub, AFWERX in Austin, Texas, by Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., and Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass.
The visit was hosted by its director, Col. Nathan Diller, who also leads the Air Force’s Agility Prime initiative. An official virtual launch to help support the rapid commercialisation of the eVTOL industry in the USA took place in April 2020.
Speaking at the time, Barrett said: “Agility Prime is a programme with a vision of world impact. The thought of an electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle — a flying car — might seem straight out of a Hollywood movie, but by partnering today with stakeholders across industries and agencies, we can set up the United States for this aerospace phenomenon.”
LIFT Aircraft’s HEXA aircraft resembles a large drone with 18 sets of propellers, motors and batteries. It has one seat for the pilot and weighs 432 lbs — which qualifies it as a Powered Ultralight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), so no pilot’s license is required to fly.
As reported by Electric VTOL News, more than 15,000 people have registered to fly the aircraft, but the start date has been pushed back because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Three prototypes are currently flying, with based two in the USA and a third near Budapest, Hungary, where LIFT has a research facility.
LIFT Aircraft is also one of the first of its size to join Agility Prime’s ‘Air Race to Certification’, and has also secured a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract.
Diller said: “We now have over fifteen of the leading aircraft manufacturers in the world applying to partner with Agility Prime, with many of them already on contract. This flight marks the first of many demonstrations and near term flight tests designed to reduce the technical risk and prepare for Agility Prime fielding in 2023.”
The US Air Force is also looking into opportunities for larger aircraft too, and earlier this year it announced that Beta Technologies and Joby Aviation had progressed to Phase III of the Initial Capabilities Opening.
According to the ICO, a successful Phase III can result in, ‘further prototyping, resource sharing, testing, production, and fielding as a launch customer.’