Electra’s Hybrid-Electric Demonstrator Aircraft Achieves “First Ultra-Short eSTOL Takeoff and Landing during Piloted Test Flights”

Elec­tra Aero, who is devel­op­ing a hybrid-elec­tric eSTOL (Short Take-off and Land­ing) air­craft, announced this week it has suc­cess­ful­ly achieved its first ultra-short flight oper­a­tions of the pilot­ed demon­stra­tor craft named EL‑2 Goldfinch, reports a press release. 

The air­craft took off after trav­el­ling less than 170 ft and then land­ed in under 114 ft, demon­strat­ing the eSTOL capa­bil­i­ty to oper­ate from spaces short­er than 300 ft.

These test flights, pilot­ed by Cody Allee, took place in April and May at the Man­as­sas Region­al Air­port and War­ren­ton-Fauquier Air­port in Vir­ginia. The longest flight last­ed 1 hour 43 min­utes. Dur­ing the cam­paign, the eSTOL air­craft reached an alti­tude of 6,500 feet and flew as slow­ly as 25 kts on take­off and land­ing.

JP Stew­art, Elec­tra VP and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, enthused, “This mile­stone is an incred­i­ble achieve­ment as we’ve proven that our eSTOL air­craft has the capa­bil­i­ty to do what we said it could do — oper­ate from spaces short­er than 300 feet.”

He con­tin­ued, “The air­craft han­dling at low-speeds has been excep­tion­al and is match­ing our analy­sis well, build­ing con­fi­dence in the pre­dict­ed capa­bil­i­ty of the 9‑passenger prod­uct design. We’ll con­tin­ue to devel­op our tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing the “thrust-by-wire” flight con­trol sys­tem to allow us to fly even slow­er on approach and fur­ther improve the STOL take­off and land­ing per­for­mance in the ongo­ing test cam­paign.”  

Data and insights gained from the flight test pro­gram will inform the design of Electra’s 9‑passenger com­mer­cial eSTOL air­craft, with entry into com­mer­cial ser­vice under FAA Part 23 reg­u­la­tions tar­get­ed for 2028. 

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Back­ground 

Electra’s blown-lift design uses eight elec­tric motors to sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase wing lift, allow­ing the eSTOL air­craft to take off and land in just 1/10th of the space need­ed by con­ven­tion­al air­craft. This enables access to loca­tions that today only heli­copters can reach. 

Mean­while, qui­et elec­tric motors reduce noise and emis­sions for com­mu­ni­ty-friend­ly oper­a­tions and hybrid-elec­tric pow­er pro­vides long-range capa­bil­i­ty with­out the need for ground-based charg­ing sta­tions.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.electra.aero

(Images: Elec­tra Aero)

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