BETA Technologies “Successfully Flies First ALIA CTOL Direct From Production Line”

BETA Tech­nolo­gies announced this week the suc­cess­ful flight of its first ALIA CTOL, off the company’s new pro­duc­tion line, reports a press release. “This marks anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant step in the company’s accel­er­at­ing pro­duc­tion efforts and path toward cus­tomer deliv­er­ies,” says the release. 

The air­craft was man­u­fac­tured at U.S‑based BETA’s 200,000 sq ft pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in South Burling­ton, Ver­mont. “Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of final assem­bly,” con­tin­ues the release, “the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) inspect­ed the air­craft for safe­ty and com­pli­ance, grant­i­ng BETA a Mul­ti­pur­pose Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cate for Exper­i­men­tal Research & Devel­op­ment, Mar­ket Sur­vey, and Crew Train­ing for the ALIA CTOL — sig­ni­fy­ing the agency’s sign-off for flight. 

On Wednes­day (Novem­ber 13th), BETA’s CEO, Founder and Test Pilot, Kyle Clark, con­duct­ed this first pro­duc­tion flight. The test, which last­ed near­ly an hour, includ­ed a take­off, climb to 7000 ft, han­dling qual­i­ties eval­u­a­tion, sta­bil­i­ty and con­trol test points and ini­tial air­speed expan­sion pri­or to fly­ing sev­er­al approach­es and a nor­mal land­ing.   

He com­ment­ed, “This start of our pro­duc­tion CX300 flight test cam­paign is a result of years of hard work and focus on study­ing cus­tomer require­ments, hard engi­neer­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, pro­duc­tion, qual­i­ty and test.” Clark con­tin­ued, “It rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for BETA, and is the begin­ning of an excit­ing new phase for the busi­ness.” 

CX300 pro­duc­tion line (Cred­it: Beta Tech­nolo­gies)

The air­craft build and sub­se­quent flight, comes close to one year after BETA opened the doors to its Ver­mont facil­i­ty. In that time, the com­pa­ny has installed aero­space-grade tool­ing for air­craft assem­bly and ground sup­port equip­ment, and stood up and start­ed pro­duc­tion of propul­sion, bat­ter­ies and oth­er sys­tems.  

Clark added, “We learned a lot from this first pro­duc­tion build. It has allowed the team to col­lect data and insight on man­u­fac­tur­ing labour, tool­ing design, process­es, yields and sequences, all of which are being used to refine our man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tems.” 

BETA is to con­tin­ue tri­alling the air­craft for the stan­dard 50 hours, at which point it is cer­tifi­cat­ed to tran­si­tion to Mar­ket Sur­vey and/or Crew Train­ing cer­tifi­cate, allow­ing the com­pa­ny to fly out­side of Burling­ton and Platts­burgh and to con­tin­ue train­ing addi­tion­al pilots on the ALIA. 

The com­pa­ny will also con­tin­ue pro­duc­tion of addi­tion­al craft, includ­ing the ALIA CTOL and ALIA VTOL con­fig­u­ra­tions. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.beta.team/

(Images: BETA Tech­nolo­gies)

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