Electra.aero completes world first as its hybrid eSTOL aircraft takes flight in Virginia

Electra.aero has con­firmed it has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the first flights of its hybrid eSTOL air­craft EL‑2 Goldfinch.

The two-seat tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor com­plet­ed an all-elec­tric flight on Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 11th, with a hybrid-elec­tric flight tak­ing place yes­ter­day (Sun­day).

Both mile­stones were pilot­ed by Cody Allee, from the Man­as­sas Region­al Air­port in Vir­ginia. The first hybrid flight last­ed 23 min­utes, reach­ing an alti­tude of 3,200ft and cov­er­ing a dis­tance of approx­i­mate­ly 30 miles.

Electra’s Vice Pres­i­dent and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er JP Stew­art, said: “We’re look­ing for­ward to fur­ther expand­ing the enve­lope of this air­craft and demon­strat­ing the full capa­bil­i­ty of Electra’s tech­nol­o­gy.”

EL‑2 Goldfinch is described by Elec­tra as the ‘world’s first blown lift air­craft using dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion and a hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem’.

It uses eight elec­tric motors to sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase wing lift and enable ultra-short take­offs and land­ings, while dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduc­ing noise and emis­sions below those of con­ven­tion­al air­craft and heli­copters. Hybrid-elec­tric pow­er pro­vides long ranges with­out the need for ground-based charg­ing sta­tions.

Elec­tra is devel­op­ing a nine-pas­sen­ger ver­sion of the air­craft for com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment mar­kets that can take off and land with ground rolls as short as 150 feet and fly at speeds of 200 mph for dis­tances of 500 miles.

Electra’s eSTOL prod­uct is backed by strong mar­ket inter­est; Elec­tra cur­rent­ly holds pre-orders from more than 30 cus­tomers for over 1,700 air­craft, total­ing more than $6 bil­lion in back­log.

Elec­tra will devel­op a pro­to­type of a full-scale pre-pro­duc­tion eSTOL air­craft under a pre­vi­ous­ly announced strate­gic fund­ing part­ner­ship val­ued up to $85 mil­lion with the U.S. Air Force AFWERX Agili­ty Prime Pro­gram. 

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and entry into com­mer­cial ser­vice under FAA Part 23 reg­u­la­tions is tar­get­ed for 2028.

Elec­tra founder and CEO John Lang­ford, said: “The aim of Elec­tra is to fill a gap in air trav­el between 50 and 500 miles, where most trips today are made by auto­mo­bile. The key to sav­ing time is to oper­ate close in, which means get­ting in and out of small spaces qui­et­ly and safe­ly, while still being fast enough to cov­er long dis­tances.

“Elec­tra will be able to take you from down­town Man­hat­tan not only to Kennedy Air­port, but to Wash­ing­ton, DC. It will bring air ser­vice to thou­sands of com­mu­ni­ties where air trav­el today is not a prac­ti­cal or afford­able option. It also opens vast new oppor­tu­ni­ties for mid­dle-mile car­go logis­tics.”