Electra Applies for FAA Part 23 Certification of its EL9 Ultra Short Electric Aircraft

Electra.aero has con­firmed it has sub­mit­ted an appli­ca­tion to the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) for Part 23 type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its nine-pas­sen­ger EL9 hybrid-elec­tric Ultra Short air­craft.

Part 23 estab­lish­es the FAA’s air­wor­thi­ness stan­dards for air­planes with 19 pas­sen­gers or few­er and is the reg­u­la­to­ry path­way for cer­ti­fy­ing small air­craft for com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger and car­go oper­a­tions.

The fil­ing marks a sig­nif­i­cant step in tran­si­tion­ing the EL9 from tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment into the for­mal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process. 

Marc Allen, Elec­tra CEO, said: “This cer­ti­fi­ca­tion appli­ca­tion sig­nals that the EL9 is fast becom­ing a real­i­ty and reflects the progress our team and the FAA have made togeth­er. The EL9 com­bines blown-lift with dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion to unlock air trav­el that takes peo­ple direct­ly from where they are to where they want to go.

“We will con­tin­ue to engage with the FAA to demon­strate that the EL9 is a reli­able fixed-wing air­craft that will serve pas­sen­gers, move car­go, and con­nect com­mu­ni­ties for many years to come.”

Electra’s sub­mis­sion includes FAA Form 8110–12, the Project Spe­cif­ic Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Plan (PSCP), and the EL9 Air­craft Spec­i­fi­ca­tion, out­lin­ing the company’s pro­posed cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis and approach to reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance. The fil­ing reflects sev­er­al years of coor­di­nat­ed engage­ment between Elec­tra and the FAA through the Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Sec­tion of Pol­i­cy and Stan­dards.

Ultra Short Per­for­mance 

The EL9 com­bines a hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion archi­tec­ture with Electra’s blown-lift wing design, which chan­nels air­flow over the wing to gen­er­ate excep­tion­al lift.

Electra’s Ultra Short tech­nol­o­gy enables reli­able, qui­et take­offs and land­ings in as lit­tle as 150 feet, open­ing thou­sands of poten­tial Ultra Short Access Points – small air­fields, heli­pads, docks, park­ing areas, indus­tri­al facil­i­ties, or remote clear­ings while main­tain­ing the speed, safe­ty, cost-effec­tive­ness, and com­fort of a fixed-wing air­craft. 

Direct Avi­a­tion: A New Mod­el for Region­al Mobil­i­ty 

Elec­tra designed the EL9 to enable Direct Avi­a­tion, a mod­el of qui­et, point-to-point mobil­i­ty that bypass­es clogged air­port hubs. The aircraft’s Ultra Short capa­bil­i­ty, fixed-wing pay­load and range, and hybrid-elec­tric effi­cien­cy allow oper­a­tors to offer reli­able region­al ser­vice direct­ly between com­mu­ni­ties, employ­ment cen­ters, logis­tics hubs, and remote loca­tions.  

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Work Con­tin­ues 

Elec­tra will con­tin­ue its ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the FAA as the EL9 pro­gress­es through the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process, includ­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion toward accep­tance of the PSCP, includ­ing com­pli­ance and con­for­mi­ty plans, and detail­ing the test imple­men­ta­tion phase of the Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process. 

With the EL9 Ultra Short, Elec­tra says its tech­nol­o­gy deliv­ers 2.5x the pay­load and 10x longer range with 70 per cent low­er oper­at­ing costs than heli­copters and eVTOL air­craft, with sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater safe­ty and far less cer­ti­fi­ca­tion risk.