Electra Joins Virginia Smart Airspace Program to Establish National Blueprint for Advanced Air Mobility Instrument Flight Rules  

Elec­tra will design, imple­ment and test a first-of-its-kind, low-cost instru­ment flight rules (IFR) net­work for Ultra Short and oth­er air­craft, com­plete with new, FAA-cer­ti­fied access points, as part of a new part­ner­ship with the Vir­ginia Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) Smart Air­space Pro­gram.

The com­pa­ny, which has devel­oped the world’s first hybrid-elec­tric Ultra Short air­craft, joins as a tech­ni­cal lead along­side NAVOS Air. The pro­gram is led by Vir­ginia Tech’s Mid-Atlantic Avi­a­tion Part­ner­ship (MAAP), sup­port­ed finan­cial­ly by the Vir­ginia Small Air­craft Trans­porta­tion Sys­tems Lab and sup­port­ed finan­cial­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly by the Vir­ginia Depart­ment of Avi­a­tion.  

The pro­gram will also cre­ate a repeat­able and scal­able mod­el for expand­ing AAM IFR net­works, start­ing with the strate­gic con­nec­tion of four Vir­ginia nodes: 

• Vir­ginia Tech Trans­porta­tion Insti­tute (VTTI): an off-air­port Ultra Short access point in Blacks­burg
• Roanoke–Blacksburg Region­al Air­port (KROA): an on-air­port Ultra Short access point that keeps AAM air­craft sep­a­rat­ed from con­ven­tion­al run­ways and flight pat­terns at a large air­port
• Allen C. Perkin­son Air­port, Black­stone (KBKT): an exist­ing FAA-approved ver­ti­port in a mixed civilian/military use envi­ron­ment that sup­ports Ultra Short access
• Shan­non Air­port: an exist­ing rur­al air­port with a turf run­way in a com­muter com­mu­ni­ty in north­ern Vir­ginia

Park­er Vas­cik, Direc­tor of Prod­uct Strat­e­gy at Elec­tra, said: “This part­ner­ship marks a crit­i­cal step for­ward on our path to unlock­ing a new era of avi­a­tion – one that is sim­pler, faster, and with­out the has­sle of today’s com­mer­cial ser­vices.

“By cre­at­ing the nec­es­sary oper­a­tional, phys­i­cal, and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture in an afford­able pack­age, we are one step clos­er to enabling safe, scal­able, and reli­able all-weath­er AAM oper­a­tions across the coun­try. Ulti­mate­ly, our goal is to trans­form the future of trav­el, giv­ing peo­ple the free­dom to trav­el from where they are to where they want to go.”  

Near­ly all com­mer­cial avi­a­tion ser­vices oper­ate under IFR to ensure reli­a­bil­i­ty, pre­dictabil­i­ty, and safe­ty, espe­cial­ly when the weath­er is not clear. 

How­ev­er, exist­ing IFR arrival and depar­ture pro­ce­dures are not designed with AAM air­craft in mind. With­out AAM-spe­cif­ic pro­ce­dures, there could be unsus­tain­able air­port con­ges­tion, reduced time sav­ings for pas­sen­gers, and chal­lenges in attain­ing full com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty of AAM air­craft.  

Electra’s team of aero­space engi­neers and pilots will work with the oth­er tech­ni­cal leads to design, imple­ment, and test instru­ment pro­ce­dures for Ultra Short air­craft, includ­ing dur­ing the most tech­ni­cal­ly dif­fi­cult part of fly­ing in poor weath­er – pro­ceed­ing from cloud cov­er­age to a land­ing site.

The GPS-devel­oped pro­ce­dures will enable flight in instru­ment mete­o­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions: broad­ly, when flight vis­i­bil­i­ty is less than 3 miles and cloud ceil­ings are less than 1,000 feet above the ground. The pro­gram will also research the suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of Ultra Short access points.  

The program’s IFR rout­ing, pro­ce­dures, and new access points will sep­a­rate AAM traf­fic from con­ven­tion­al flights, enable more direct rout­ing, and be based on GPS nav­i­ga­tion, mak­ing it a low-cost, scal­able mod­el for repli­ca­tion around the Unit­ed States.  

Tombo Jones, the Direc­tor of MAAP, an FAA Des­ig­nat­ed Test Site, said: “The Vir­ginia AAM Smart Air­space Pro­gram is estab­lish­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry, pro­ce­dur­al, and oper­a­tional foun­da­tion for real-world AAM deployment—not in the future, but now.

“With FAA engage­ment, proven tech­ni­cal meth­ods, and scal­able infra­struc­ture, Vir­ginia is help­ing to define the nation­al blue­print for how Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty will oper­ate in every­day air­space.” 

A sum­mer 2024 eco­nom­ic analy­sis con­duct­ed by the Com­mon­wealth Cen­ter for Advanced Logis­tics Sys­tems to mea­sure the impacts of enabling AAM oper­a­tions across Vir­ginia pro­ject­ed more than $16 bil­lion gen­er­at­ed in new eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, $2.8 bil­lion gen­er­at­ed in tax rev­enue, and the cre­ation of more than 17,000 high-val­ue jobs across the aero­space ecosys­tem through 2045.  

Electra’s Direct Avi­a­tion mod­el uses Ultra Short air­craft, which can take off and land in as lit­tle as 150 feet, to unlock thou­sands of new Ultra Short access points – includ­ing fields, park­ing lots, and under­uti­lized run­ways – bring­ing air trav­el clos­er to where peo­ple live, work, and play.

By pair­ing prac­ti­cal infra­struc­ture with trans­for­ma­tive capa­bil­i­ty, Direct Avi­a­tion enables trips that were pre­vi­ous­ly imprac­ti­cal or impos­si­ble and expands eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­mu­ni­ties of every size.