BETA Technologies’ ALIA CTOL aircraft completes its first all-electric flight into Canada

BETA Tech­nolo­gies has com­plet­ed the first flight of a ful­ly-elec­tric air­craft into Mon­tréal, Cana­da, rep­re­sent­ing the first time its ALIA CTOL has crossed inter­na­tion­al bor­ders.

Pilot­ed by BETA test pilot Chris Caputo, with BETA flight test engi­neer Emma Davis fly­ing in the right seat, the air­craft safe­ly land­ed at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Inter­na­tion­al Air­port at 2.24pm EDT yes­ter­day (Wednes­day).

The flight, which set off from BETA’s flight test cen­tre at Platts­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in New York, cov­ered 64 miles (55nm) and last­ed 30 min­utes. The flight involved tra­vers­ing the busy air­space of YUL air­port, a Class B air­port, which typ­i­cal­ly sees up to an aver­age of 53,000 pas­sen­gers per day.

Kyle Clark, BETA’s Founder and CEO, said: “It’s excit­ing to have this oppor­tu­ni­ty to fly our all-elec­tric air­craft into one of the busiest air­ports in one of the top aero­space cap­i­tals of the world. Our air­craft design is being devel­oped by a col­lab­o­ra­tive, cross-bor­der team of tal­ent­ed engi­neers, many of whom are based right here at our grow­ing hub in Mon­tréal.

“Quebec’s focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and car­bon neu­tral­i­ty match­es ours at BETA, and we are grate­ful for the sup­port of our part­ners in the region, like ICAO, AéroMon­tréal, the air­port, and the del­e­ga­tion. This flight rep­re­sents anoth­er mean­ing­ful step toward cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able avi­a­tion future glob­al­ly.”

Pri­or to this first inter­na­tion­al flight, BETA has flown its pro­to­type air­craft more than 42,000km (26,000mi) over the past three plus years, includ­ing mul­ti­ple flights halfway across the U.S. — charg­ing on its own charg­ing infra­struc­ture along the way and flights with test pilots from the U.S. mil­i­tary and FAA. The com­pa­ny is rapid­ly pro­gress­ing toward FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its eCTOL and eVTOL air­craft designs.

BETA flew the air­craft to its Mon­tréal office, which the com­pa­ny offi­cial­ly opened in March 2023 as a way to tap into the deep pool of aero­space tal­ent in the region. BETA’s Cana­di­an team has since grown to 70 in the aero­space cap­i­tal, with plans to con­tin­ue hir­ing as the com­pa­ny advances toward cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

To com­mem­o­rate this his­toric moment, BETA host­ed a small con­tin­gent of lead­ers from across the aero­space and trans­porta­tion indus­tries to dis­play its ALIA air­craft and dis­cuss the impor­tance of sus­tain­able avi­a­tion, and the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the regions.

Join­ing Kyle Clark were the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of ICAO, Juan Car­los Salazar; Pres­i­dent of AeroMon­tréal, Melanie Lussier; the Que­bec Del­e­gate for New Eng­land, Marie-Claude Fran­coeur; and Yves Beauchamp, Pres­i­dent and CEO of ADM.

Salazar said: “This aircraft’s safe arrival here yes­ter­day rep­re­sents the very first inter­na­tion­al flight of a 100 per cent elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered air­craft, con­fig­ured to car­ry pas­sen­gers or car­go, and pro­vides a con­crete and very time­ly exam­ple of the incred­i­ble inno­va­tion tak­ing place all across our sec­tor to help address the CO2 emis­sions impacts of inter­na­tion­al air mobil­i­ty.

ICAO is work­ing extreme­ly hard to encour­age this trans­for­ma­tion in avi­a­tion, and to sup­port the nation­al reg­u­la­tors who work close­ly with inno­va­tors like BETA to test and cer­ti­fy these amaz­ing new air­craft types.”

Lussier added: “This major first demon­strates the indus­try’s com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty, and the fruit of col­lab­o­ra­tive inno­va­tion to rede­fine, cre­ate and com­mer­cialise an entire­ly new response for the avi­a­tion sec­tor. It’s a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward in Que­bec’s tran­si­tion and rein­forces, with­out a doubt, Que­bec’s place in inno­va­tion and affect­ing pro­found and pos­i­tive change in the indus­try. I am con­vinced that this is the first of more to come.“

BETA has designed and will cer­ti­fy and pro­duce two all-elec­tric, net-zero air­craft: the ALIA CTOL, an elec­tric fixed-wing air­plane, and the ALIA VTOL, an elec­tric take­off and land­ing air­craft. The two air­craft share 80 per cent com­mon design ele­ments, cre­at­ing a sim­ple, stream­lined path to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The com­pa­ny has been fly­ing its two pro­to­type air­craft, one in each con­fig­u­ra­tion, for more than three years, con­duct­ing pilot­ed flight tests on a dai­ly basis (weath­er pend­ing). BETA is also build­ing mul­ti­modal, inter­op­er­a­ble elec­tric charg­ing infra­struc­ture to pow­er the shift to elec­tric trans­porta­tion. This net­work, which will span across the U.S. with a pos­si­bil­i­ty of inter­na­tion­al util­i­ty, will sup­port var­i­ous dif­fer­ent types of elec­tric air­craft as well as ground EVs.

The BETA team has grown to 600 mem­bers, with head­quar­ters and a man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in Burling­ton, Ver­mont, a flight test facil­i­ty in Platts­burgh, New York, and offices in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, and Spring­field, Ohio, in addi­tion to its new hub in Mon­tréal, Que­bec.