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Vertical Aerospace reaches stage two of piloted thrustborne testing of its full-scale VX4 prototype in latest milestone

 Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the sec­ond stage of pilot­ed thrust­borne test­ing of its full scale VX4 pro­to­type, which is now enter­ing the penul­ti­mate phase of flight test­ing: wing­borne flight.

This phase will mark a defin­ing moment in the VX4’s devel­op­ment, push­ing beyond the lim­its of the secure air­space of Cotswold Airport’s air­field and into real-world oper­at­ing con­di­tions for the first time.   

Dur­ing Phase 2, the air­craft com­plet­ed more than thir­ty pilot­ed test flights, which includ­ed com­plet­ing suc­cess­ful hov­er and low speed flight manoeu­vres, as well as exe­cut­ing han­dling and per­for­mance pro­ce­dures includ­ing roll, yaw, and spot-turns. 

Engi­neers were able to col­lect hun­dreds of data points to deter­mine the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the air­craft sys­tems, as well as thrust lev­els, lift effi­cien­cy, and pow­er-to-thrust ratio and con­trol respon­sive­ness. These pilot­ed pro­to­type flights expe­ri­enced no sys­tem fail­ures and exceed­ed expec­ta­tions for sta­bil­i­ty and per­for­mance.  

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “This year has start­ed with incred­i­ble momen­tum, and this phase of test­ing has giv­en us invalu­able insights into our phe­nom­e­nal air­craft.

“Each mile­stone brings us clos­er to chang­ing how the world moves, and we are tak­ing these learn­ings for­ward as we con­tin­ue advanc­ing our pilot­ed flight test pro­gramme. I’m incred­i­bly excit­ed to be on the cusp of anoth­er his­toric moment as we pre­pare for our most advanced stage of test­ing yet.”

To progress to wing­borne flight, the next phase of the flight test pro­gramme, the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) will first need to expand Vertical’s Per­mit to Fly.

Once approved, the VX4 will take off, fly, and land like a con­ven­tion­al air­craft, with lift gen­er­at­ed by its wings rather than its rotors. Tran­si­tion­ing from a tight­ly con­trolled test envi­ron­ment to more dynam­ic, scal­able oper­a­tions is a major leap for­ward on the path to full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty.

Once the air­craft has com­plet­ed wing­borne flight, the air­craft will have, in effect, com­plet­ed a mini-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process with this pro­to­type. 

While Ver­ti­cal works with the CAA to expand its Per­mit to Fly it will con­tin­ue to per­form impor­tant sys­tem and com­po­nent test­ing as well as pro­gress­ing the devel­op­ment of an iden­ti­cal full-scale pro­to­type which will accel­er­ate the VX4’s flight test pro­gramme and demon­stra­tion capa­bil­i­ty.  

Simon Davies, Vertical’s Chief Test Pilot and who flew the VX4, said: “This phase of test­ing allowed us to put the VX4 through key flight manoeu­vres in real-world con­di­tions, giv­ing us valu­able insights into its reli­a­bil­i­ty and respon­sive­ness under more demand­ing sce­nar­ios. The air­craft per­formed excep­tion­al­ly, being just as sta­ble and sim­ple to fly as our sim­u­la­tions. 

“It’s incred­i­ble to see how far we’ve come—from the first teth­ered flights just months ago to now suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing thrust­borne test­ing. I’m look­ing for­ward to the months ahead as we push the flight enve­lope fur­ther and take the next crit­i­cal steps towards wing­borne flight.” 

This lat­est news builds on Vertical’s strong start to 2025, fol­low­ing the appoint­ment of Dómh­nal Slat­tery as Chair and the announce­ment of its upsized $90m under­writ­ten pub­lic offer­ing.  

Fol­low­ing wing­borne test­ing, the VX4 will enter a final phase of tran­si­tion test­ing to demon­strate its abil­i­ty to switch between ver­ti­cal and for­ward flight modes.   

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