BETA to certify fixed-wing electric airplane alongside its eVTOL

BETA Tech­nolo­gies is to cer­ti­fy the CX300, a eCTOL mod­el of its all-elec­tric air­craft, mark­ing the company’s sec­ond all-elec­tric air­craft offer­ing in par­al­lel with its exist­ing ALIA-250 eVTOL.

New and exist­ing cus­tomers have placed orders for the eCTOL air­craft, includ­ing Unit­ed Ther­a­peu­tics, Bris­tow, and Air New Zealand. BETA will test two pro­to­types simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in order to cap­ture twice the per­for­mance data and con­cur­rent­ly focus on both hov­er and wing­borne flight, as eVTOLs spend more than 98% of flights in wing­borne cruise.

BETA’s eCTOL test mile­stones include fly­ing more than 22,000 miles, cross­ing mul­ti­ple state lines, com­plet­ing qual­i­ta­tive eval­u­a­tion flights with FAA, Air Force and Army test pilots, and clos­ing a range of over 386 miles. BETA has designed both its eCTOL and eVTOL air­craft to ful­fill essen­tial mis­sions for its cus­tomer base across the car­go, med­ical, defense, and pas­sen­ger sec­tors.

“We have been fly­ing our air­port-to-air­port eCTOL pro­to­type for a few years now to dri­ve tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in propul­sion and sys­tems, and now we see that there is a clear mar­ket for this prod­uct in addi­tion to our eVTOL air­craft,” said BETA’s founder and CEO, Kyle Clark.

“We con­tin­ue to progress the ALIA design through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, in har­mo­ny with the eCTOL pro­gram to pro­vide low­er cost and more options.”

BETA applied to the FAA last year for Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the CX300 under Part 23, and is tar­get­ing 2025 for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and deliv­ery. The air­frame, bat­ter­ies, propul­sion and sys­tems used in the CX300 will be com­mon with the ALIA-250, which is already advanc­ing through the FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and achieved a first hov­er in 2020.

BETA’s CX300 air­port-to-air­port capa­bil­i­ties will pro­vide a low oper­a­tional cost, high-use air­craft that oper­a­tors can inte­grate into their net­works imme­di­ate­ly. ‘Top glob­al oper­a­tors’ have placed orders for the CX300 with plans to inte­grate it into car­go and pas­sen­ger net­work oper­a­tions.

After select­ing BETA as a part­ner in its Mis­sion Next-Gen Air­craft pro­gram in 2022, Air New Zealand has declared an intent to order three eCTOL air­craft, with an option for 20 more.

BETA Tech­nolo­gies, VoltAero, Evi­a­tion and Cran­field Aero­space cho­sen as Air New Zealand’s NextGen Air­craft part­ners

“Fly­ing towards a more sus­tain­able avi­a­tion sec­tor isn’t some­thing that can be solved by one sin­gle air­line or organ­i­sa­tion,” said Air New Zealand’s Chief Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Offi­cer Kiri Han­nifin.

“At Air New Zealand we have an ambi­tion to fly our first zero emis­sions com­mer­cial demon­stra­tor flight from 2026. Our part­ner­ship with BETA is incred­i­bly impor­tant to help­ing us get there.”

Bris­tow, a lead­ing glob­al provider of inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able ver­ti­cal flight solu­tions, has placed a deposit-backed order for up to 50 eCTOL air­craft. This comes in addi­tion to its orig­i­nal order of five eVTOL air­craft, with an option for up to 55 more.

“As a con­tin­u­a­tion of our orig­i­nal part­ner­ship with BETA on the Alia 250 eVTOL, we see many oppor­tu­ni­ties to sup­ply logis­tics and per­son­nel trans­port with CX300 once the air­craft is cer­ti­fied,” said Dave Stepanek, Bris­tow exec­u­tive VP.

Bris­tow Orders 55 BETA Tech­nolo­gies ALIA-250 eVTOL Air­craft