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VIDEO: BETA Technologies completes manned, full transition of its ALIA eVTOL aircraft in key industry milestone

BETA Tech­nolo­gies has com­plet­ed a manned, full tran­si­tion of its ALIA eVTOL air­craft, in what is a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment for the com­pa­ny.

The announce­ment fol­lows on from BETA receiv­ing UL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion on its charge cube, and adds to a host of oth­er mile­stones which includes a dis­tance record for manned bat­tery-pow­ered flight and its pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties.

Releas­ing more details today (Tues­day), BETA said in a state­ment:

“ALIA was pilot­ed by Nate Moy­er, who is BETA’s Test Pilot and a for­mer Exper­i­men­tal Test Pilot of the U.S. Air Force. We’ve been pro­gress­ing toward this tech­ni­cal mile­stone for a while. It’s a new flight regime, and we fly all our mis­sions with a pilot in the seat, so we approached it the best way we know how: by respect­ing physics. Like every­thing we do at BETA, we took a method­i­cal, step-by-step approach.

“Tran­si­tion — and all of the incre­men­tal test­ing lead­ing up to it — pro­vides us with the data we need to val­i­date our design deci­sions as we con­tin­ue toward cer­ti­fy­ing A250. It also brings us one step clos­er to get­ting this tech­nol­o­gy into the mar­ket and into the hands of our cus­tomers to com­plete mean­ing­ful mis­sions.
This run­way inde­pen­dent air­craft will first be used by mil­i­tary, then car­go car­ri­ers, fol­lowed by pas­sen­ger car­ry­ing oper­a­tors. The sim­plic­i­ty sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces main­te­nance and cost, increas­es reli­a­bil­i­ty and safe­ty all while fly­ing with zero emis­sions.“

BETA has flown ALIA pro­to­types for more than four years, and has clocked more than 40,000 nau­ti­cal miles in total across both air­craft.

In Sep­tem­ber 2023, BETA flew its ALIA CTOL air­craft across the inter­na­tion­al bor­der into Montréal–Trudeau Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, mark­ing the first time an all-elec­tric air­craft had flown into Mon­tre­al.

In Octo­ber 2023, BETA flew 1,700 nau­ti­cal miles from Ver­mont to Flori­da, cross­ing 12 states to deliv­er ALIA for deploy­ment with the U.S. Air Force down at Duke Field/Eglin Air Force Base.

This mis­sion includ­ed stops at 20 air­ports; inau­gur­al charges and ground­break­ing cer­e­monies at first-in-state elec­tric air­craft charg­ers; flights through Class B air­space in Boston and New York; and a flight through the D.C. Flight Restrict­ed Zone (FRZ) to land at Joint Base Andrews.

In Jan­u­ary 2024, BETA con­clud­ed its first deploy­ment with the U.S. Air Force, hav­ing con­duct­ed three months of exper­i­men­tal oper­a­tions and train­ing with the 413th Flight Test Squadron through the Agili­ty Prime pro­gram.

Togeth­er, BETA and the 413th achieved mis­sion assess­ments across flight oper­a­tions, main­te­nance sup­port, and infrared sig­na­ture char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. ALIA also par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sim­u­lat­ed casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion (CASEVAC) sce­nario with the 41st Res­cue Squadron, an active duty Air Force unit based out of Moody AFB in Geor­gia.

Fol­low­ing the deploy­ment, BETA flew to the Savan­nah Air Dom­i­nance Cen­ter in Geor­gia, where the Air Nation­al Guard invit­ed the com­pa­ny to oper­ate along­side 350 air­men and women in an Agile Com­bat Employ­ment (ACE) exer­cise.

ALIA inte­grat­ed seam­less­ly into oper­a­tions to do key resource trans­port, con­duct casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion sim­u­la­tions, and con­duct tac­ti­cal resup­ply mis­sions, while oper­at­ing along­side six mil­i­tary-issued air­craft, and becom­ing the first elec­tric air­craft to par­tic­i­pate in this type of train­ing.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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