Skyborne Airline Academy goes electric thanks to eFlyer order from Bye Aerospace

Bye Aero­space has now reached 360 paid pur­chase deposits for its eFly­er fam­i­ly of all-elec­tric air­craft, after Sky­borne Air­line Acad­e­my com­plet­ed pur­chase deposits for six eFly­er 2s and four eFly­er 4s.

They will be added to Sky­borne’s cur­rent fleet of UK-based train­ing air­craft, which is based at Glouces­ter­shire Air­port in Staver­ton, UK.

Found­ed in 2018, the Acad­e­my deliv­ers a broad range of pilot train­ing cours­es, from its flag­ship EASA/UKCAA Inte­grat­ed and Com­bined Mod­u­lar ATPL pro­grammes, to its advanced Upset Pre­ven­tion and Recov­ery Train­ing (UPRT), Air­line Pilot Stan­dards Mul­ti-Crew Co-oper­a­tion (APS MCC) and mil­i­tary con­ver­sion cours­es.

Lee Wood­ward, Sky­borne CEO, said: “We are rad­i­cal­ly redefin­ing every aspect of air­line pilot train­ing, and that includes incor­po­rat­ing all-elec­tric air­craft into our fleet as we invest in the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy for our trainees and staff.

“The eFly­er fam­i­ly of air­craft are great for the envi­ron­ment, eco­nom­i­cal to oper­ate and have the right blend of avion­ic tech­nol­o­gy and han­dling char­ac­ter­is­tics required to train our future air­line pilots.”

Bye Aero­space is devel­op­ing the FAA FAR 23-cer­ti­fied fam­i­ly of all-elec­tric eFly­er gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­craft, start­ing with the two-seat eFly­er 2, for the pro­fes­sion­al flight train­ing mis­sion and the four-seat eFly­er 4 for air taxi and advanced train­ing uses.

The com­pa­ny says its cur­rent and future fam­i­lies of air­craft fea­ture exem­plary engi­neer­ing, research, and elec­tric air­craft solu­tions pro­duc­ing no CO₂ and are designed to answer com­pelling mar­ket needs.

These needs include five-fold low­er oper­at­ing costs, zero emis­sions, and decreased noise. Bye Aero­space esti­mates the eFly­er will elim­i­nate the release of five mil­lion met­ric tons of CO₂ each year for flight train­ing.

George E. Bye, CEO of Bye Aero­space, con­grat­u­lat­ed and thanked Sky­borne for their eFly­er pur­chase deposits. He said: “Sky­borne is a pio­neer of elec­tric avi­a­tion in the UK and has been par­tic­u­lar­ly resilient in their approach to flight train­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic,” he said. “Their abil­i­ty to recog­nise and pre­pare for the ben­e­fits of elec­tric avi­a­tion while adjust­ing to the chal­lenges pre­sent­ed by coro­n­avirus has been impres­sive.”

Wood­ward added: “A sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in glob­al car­bon emis­sions is the goal for most social­ly respon­si­ble organ­i­sa­tions in our indus­try, and with the help of Bye Aero­space, we aim to lead the way in the UK. It’s vital for the next gen­er­a­tion that we invest in mea­sures to make fly­ing more sus­tain­able. Elec­tric is the future of avi­a­tion.”