LCI commits to buying up to 125 of BETA Technologies’ ALIA eVTOL aircraft

LCI, a lead­ing avi­a­tion com­pa­ny and a sub­sidiary of the Libra Group, has signed an agree­ment to acquire up to 125 of BETA Tech­nolo­gies’ ALIA eVTOL air­craft. 

LCI will ini­tial­ly acquire 50 air­craft cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment at BETA’s facil­i­ty in Burling­ton, Ver­mont, which will com­ple­ment LCI’s exist­ing fleet of mod­ern heli­copters and fixed-wing air­craft, and almost dou­ble the num­ber of air­craft on its avi­a­tion plat­form to over 270 units.

Jas­pal Jan­du, CEO of LCI, says: “We are embrac­ing this new era of sus­tain­able flight and BETA Tech­nolo­gies’ inno­v­a­tive approach makes them a nat­ur­al and cred­i­ble part­ner for LCI.

“We believe that the aircraft’s blend of recharge­able bat­tery pow­er, sig­nif­i­cant inter­nal capac­i­ty, and plen­ti­ful range is an opti­mal one. We are con­fi­dent it will be a pop­u­lar choice for oper­a­tors and end-users seek­ing to devel­op and aug­ment their fleets with this tru­ly sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy.”

BETA’s ALIA pro­duces zero emis­sions with a max­i­mum range of 250 nau­ti­cal miles and is designed to car­ry five pas­sen­gers and a pilot, or a 635 kg pay­load for appli­ca­tions includ­ing car­go, med­ical and pas­sen­ger.

Key advan­tages include the abil­i­ty to recharge in under an hour, net-zero emis­sions, and low­er main­te­nance require­ments. BETA is also devel­op­ing charg­ing infra­struc­ture, as well as elec­tric ground vehi­cles.

Kyle Clark, Founder and CEO of BETA, said: “As a lead­ing air­craft lessor with an estab­lished glob­al track record, LCI has a strong pulse on what oper­a­tors are look­ing for. We are grat­i­fied by their con­fi­dence that the solu­tions we’re build­ing will answer the need for next-gen­er­a­tion, zero-emis­sion elec­tric air­craft. We are excit­ed to part­ner with LCI and push adop­tion of this solu­tion for­ward with­in the indus­try.”

In addi­tion, LCI and its par­ent com­pa­ny, the Libra Group, whose sub­sidiaries own and oper­ate assets in more than 50 coun­tries, plan to share com­mer­cial, finan­cial and sup­ply-chain exper­tise with BETA through well-estab­lished indus­try net­works.

George Logo­thetis, Chair­man and CEO of the Libra Group, added: “As a glob­al hold­ing com­pa­ny, Libra Group and its sub­sidiaries are com­mit­ted to advanc­ing a clean ener­gy future. Through this agree­ment, LCI will bring car­bon-free trans­porta­tion to cus­tomers around the world.

“Today’s announce­ment by LCI is the tip of the spear in the inno­va­tion piv­ot of Libra Group and thus our entire orga­ni­za­tion. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to part­ner with inno­v­a­tive and future think­ing com­pa­nies that can ben­e­fit from our glob­al plat­form and to help cat­alyze the uptake of life-sav­ing, trans­for­ma­tive tech­nolo­gies across the world.”

Since its incep­tion in 2004, LCI has under­tak­en in excess of US$8 bil­lion of trans­ac­tions in the avi­a­tion mar­kets.