Faradair Aerospace sets up new aviation consortium as it aims to build 300 BEHA aircraft by 2030

British aero­space start­up Faradair® Aero­space has revealed a strong con­sor­tium of avi­a­tion part­ners which will help build 300 of its Bio Elec­tric Hybrid Air­craft (BEHA) air­craft by 2030.

Fea­tur­ing Hon­ey­well, mag­niX, Cam­bridge Con­sul­tants and Nova Sys­tems, Faradair Aero­space will work with each firm to devel­op BEHA in what is the largest proof-of-con­cept mobil­i­ty pro­gramme ever cre­at­ed.

Of the 300 air­craft, 150 will be built in fire­fight­ing con­fig­u­ra­tion, 75 as quick change from car­go to pas­sen­ger mis­sions and deployed at air­fields glob­al­ly, and 50 as pure freighters. The final 25 air­craft will be demon­strat­ed in non-civil­ian gov­ern­ment roles, includ­ing logis­tics, bor­der and fish­eries patrol, and drug inter­dic­tion.

Neil Clough­ley, Faradair Aero­space’s Founder and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, said: “The year 2020 has been an extreme­ly tough year for aero­space and I am delight­ed to be able to share this pos­i­tive news, not only for the UK aero­space sec­tor, but the sus­tain­able aero­space sec­tor glob­al­ly.

“We are hon­oured to announce our col­lab­o­ra­tion with these lead­ing organ­i­sa­tions. Their input will enable us to deliv­er the BEHA pro­to­type by 2024 and sub­se­quent Part 23 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for oper­a­tional tri­als from 2026. Gain­ing such sup­port val­i­dates our busi­ness mod­el and capa­bil­i­ty of the BEHA.”

Faradair® will work with Hon­ey­well on the BEHA tur­bo­gen­er­a­tor, com­prised of Honeywell’s gas tur­bine and gen­er­a­tor tech­nolo­gies, with the abil­i­ty to run on sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel, to sup­port the hybrid-elec­tric air­craft design in addi­tion to oth­er tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing avion­ics and flight con­trol sys­tems.

mag­niX is regard­ed as the lead­ing provider of elec­tric motors to the avi­a­tion indus­try and the BEHA will use two magni500 e‑motors and asso­ci­at­ed mag­niDrive con­trol sys­tem tech­nol­o­gy for flight propul­sion.

Cam­bridge Con­sul­tants brings its vital exper­tise in hybrid propul­sion archi­tec­ture to the devel­op­ment of the BEHA’s hybrid propul­sion sys­tem, inte­grat­ing the tur­bine and flight e‑motors, while Nova Sys­tems will assist Faradair® through the ear­ly pro­to­type devel­op­ment stages.

In line with UK Gov­ern­ment ambi­tions for sus­tain­able air trans­port, the British-designed and built BEHA will emerge in hybrid electric/turbine con­fig­u­ra­tion, but engi­neered for evo­lu­tion into a ful­ly elec­tric ‘net zero’ com­mer­cial air­craft when pow­er gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy deliv­ers the pow­er den­si­ty lev­els required for an 18-seat util­i­ty air­craft.

Stéphane Fymat, vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er for UAS/UAM at Hon­ey­well, said: “We are proud be part of this devel­op­ment pro­gramme that works toward new meth­ods of trans­porta­tion that are qui­eter, clean­er and more effi­cient. Our work with Faradair demon­strates our ongo­ing com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing the future of flight.”

mag­niX CEO Roei Gan­zars­ki added: “The BEHA is an excit­ing devel­op­ment pro­gramme in the elec­tric avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion and one that mag­niX is delight­ed to be a part of. It embod­ies the next step in sus­tain­able region­al air trans­port.”

The BEHA is specif­i­cal­ly designed for low cost, qui­et, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly flight, qual­i­ties that enable it to deliv­er Air Mobil­i­ty as a Ser­vice (AMaaS) to all. It con­verts from an 18-seat pas­sen­ger con­fig­u­ra­tion to car­go in just 15 min­utes. Accom­mo­dat­ing three LD3 car­go con­tain­ers and pay­loads of up to 5 tons, Faradair says BEHA is an envi­ron­ment-neu­tral work­horse, max­imis­ing rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ty 24/7.

Talks are now advanc­ing at pace with investors and air­craft finance organ­i­sa­tions to enable the full pro­gramme of devel­op­ment to scale up and meet the tar­get objec­tives.

Mean­while, Faradair® is build­ing its exec­u­tive and engi­neer­ing team, and expects to make fur­ther announce­ments ear­ly in 2021. The com­pa­ny moved its head­quar­ters from Glouces­ter­shire to the his­toric air­field at IWM Dux­ford in Cam­bridge, in Sep­tem­ber 2020.