Beta Electric Alia-250 Completes Second Successful Flight Across America (876 miles!)

While all eyes mar­vel at the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of the eVTOL Air­craft from Archer, Joby and Aut­oFlight to Volo­copter, Lil­i­um, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and the like, a less­er known com­pa­ny is ahead of their progress, yet flies under the public’s radar — the Beta Tech­nolo­gies elec­tric-pow­ered ‘Alia-250’.

The com­pa­ny announced this week its sec­ond suc­cess­ful flight across Amer­i­ca, all of 876 miles in length. This seems aston­ish­ing giv­en the bet­ter-known eVTOL com­pa­nies have either bare­ly got off the ground or only flown short flights in the sky.

Yet, it was on May 23rd the Alia (N250UT) began its first mam­moth jour­ney across the U.S. Tak­ing off from Platts­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in east­ern New York, near Lake Cham­plain and the bor­der with Ver­mont, it flew in a south west­er­ly direc­tion towards Akron, Ohio. Then onward to Spring­field, Ohio and Bloom­ing­ton, Indi­ana, before push­ing into Illi­nois, Mis­souri, and final­ly Ben­tonville, Arkansas.

The craft land­ed at des­ig­nat­ed bat­tery charg­ing points twice a day, where flight legs ranged from around 160 miles to as long as 211, with an aver­age fly­ing time of 88 min­utes. All told, over the eight days the mis­sion last­ed, the air­craft was in the air for near­ly 12 hours com­plet­ing a jour­ney of… wait for this… 1,403 miles. (Please watch the video below).

Manon Belzile, a Beta team mem­ber, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly com­ment­ed, “It was awe­some. The craft flew super well with no hic­cups. It was like a dream come true. In just three years, we had gone from test­ing in a con­vert­ed hang­er to fly­ing across Amer­i­ca.”

Belzile also stat­ed that each flown 160 nau­ti­cal miles by the elec­tric Alia cost USD19 dol­lars, where­as the petrol charges for the Cess­na Car­a­van chase plane that accom­pa­nied it through­out the cross coun­try flight was “USD800 bucks” com­pared to Alia’s USD166 dol­lars. Yet, some­how this pio­neer­ing and hero­ic jour­ney nev­er gained the full acco­lades it deserved.

Six months on, Beta decid­ed to car­ry out a sim­i­lar jour­ney along a sim­i­lar flight path, but of a short­er dura­tion. This time there were sev­en stops to recharge; tak­ing five days to com­plete, after a hold-up for snow in New York; where the Alia flew over four Amer­i­can states; com­plet­ed up to three dai­ly flights; fly­ing in and out of busy air­space includ­ing three Class C air­ports and one Class B air­space; oper­at­ed in cold, win­ter con­di­tions; and con­duct­ed flights with a small crew.

Pete Buttigieg with Beta CEO Kyle Clark (bot­tom right)

This time the Alia com­plet­ed its jour­ney at UPS World­port in Louisville, Ken­tucky, where Beta then intro­duced the air­craft to U.S Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion, Pete Buttigieg.

All flights were sin­gle pilot­ed, rotat­ing between two of Beta’s test pilots, Lochie Fer­ri­er and Nick War­ren. The craft and team suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ed crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal and oper­a­tional devel­op­ments since the pre­vi­ous mis­sion in May.

Yet, there is “a small catch” to this uplift­ing sto­ry.

The Alia-250 is not tech­ni­cal­ly a pure eVTOL Air­craft… yet! That will come when the com­pa­ny ful­ly focus­es on its evolved sec­ond pro­to­type — the Alia-250c — which began hov­er­ing tri­als back in the Spring. The craft that has car­ried out both flights across Amer­i­ca is an actu­al eCTOL fly­ing in an elec­tric con­ven­tion­al take­off and land­ing con­fig­u­ra­tion.

Mean­while, Beta Tech­nolo­gies remains on course to cer­ti­fy the ful­ly-fledged eVTOL Alia in late 2024 or ear­ly 2025. In fact, this could become ful­ly cer­ti­fied before the major­i­ty of its com­pe­ti­tion.

Alia Pilot Lochie Fer­ri­er

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