“Electra, Surf Air Mobility Complete First Commercial Demos of Ultra Short Aircraft”

Elec­tra, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Surf Air Mobil­i­ty and Vir­ginia Tech, have suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the first series of pub­lic demon­stra­tions of its EL9 Ultra Short air­craft, reports a press release.

The demos, car­ried out ear­li­er this month, high­light­ed how blown lift and hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion togeth­er enable take­offs and land­ings in 150 ft or less at Ultra Short Access Points con­nect­ed to airstrips, small and remote envi­ron­ments as well as cam­pus set­tings.

These capa­bil­i­ties open the door to thou­sands of poten­tial new routes that can be flown once Elec­tra’s air­craft reach­es com­mer­cial ser­vice in 2029.

The demon­stra­tions took place at sev­er­al loca­tions at Vir­ginia Tech. These includ­ed:-

: A 300-foot by 75-foot paved sur­face used for take­off and land­ing of small unmanned air­craft sys­tems (UAS).

: An access road on a closed test-bed cam­pus research facil­i­ty man­aged by the Vir­ginia Tech Trans­porta­tion Insti­tute (VTTI) in coop­er­a­tion with the Vir­ginia Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (VDOT).

: A grass field at The Vir­ginia Tech Cor­po­rate Research Cen­tre.

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Surf Air Mobil­i­ty, via its air­line sub-brands South­ern Air­ways and Mokulele Air­lines, have flown many mil­lions of pas­sen­gers, mil­lions of miles since incep­tion. The company’s decade of oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence; exist­ing nation­wide com­muter sched­uled flight net­work; and pro­pri­etary Sur­fOS soft­ware, is cre­at­ing a plat­form to enable the launch of new elec­tri­fied air­craft. 

Once cer­ti­fied, Electra’s EL9 has the poten­tial to lever­age Surf’s oper­a­tions and soft­ware plat­form to bring the air­craft tech­nol­o­gy to mar­ket at scale.

Marc Allen, CEO of Elec­tra, com­ment­ed, “These demon­stra­tions show­cased breath­tak­ing­ly short take­offs and land­ings and pin­point land­ing capa­bil­i­ties with the pow­er to trans­form avi­a­tion as we know it. We are now demon­strat­ing these capa­bil­i­ties in real world, non-air­port envi­ron­ments.”

Louis Saint-Cyr, COO and Pres­i­dent of Surf’s Hawai’i Oper­a­tions, added, “What imme­di­ate­ly stood out was the oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty the EL9 will enable. The air­craft will be faster to turn around, less expen­sive to oper­ate and eas­i­er to deploy.”

The release explains, “Direct Avi­a­tion (DA) brings air trav­el clos­er to home, work and play. Instead of rely­ing on a few large, con­gest­ed air­port hubs, Direct Avi­a­tion uses hun­dreds of thou­sands of small­er, more acces­si­ble loca­tions. These Ultra Short Access Points can be as small as soc­cer fields and include under­utilised air­port facil­i­ties, nov­el air strips, or ded­i­cat­ed spaces near cam­pus­es or com­mer­cial areas.”

It con­tin­ues, “DA removes the choke­points of tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion that lim­it access and add time on both ends of the jour­ney due to the reliance on a hand­ful of major air­ports. This mod­el replaces long, con­gest­ed dri­ves, packed ter­mi­nals and under­utilised run­ways with direct, effi­cient flights that cater to today’s trav­el needs.”

Marc Allen

A recent study by researchers from Geor­gia Tech analysed region­al trav­el demand and pat­terns in the U.S. North­east Cor­ri­dor, iden­ti­fy­ing strong demand for DA and ide­al routes for Ultra Short avi­a­tion ser­vices.

Many of the region­al routes iden­ti­fied fall with­in the 50 to 300 nau­ti­cal mile range, which is too short for tra­di­tion­al air trav­el to be prac­ti­cal, but too far or con­gest­ed for effi­cient ground trav­el. 

Eric Pater­son, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Vir­ginia Tech Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Insti­tute, remarked, “What Elec­tra demon­strat­ed was a first glimpse of how air trav­el will work in the near future. It was a prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tion of how the EL9 can inte­grate into every­day envi­ron­ments, prov­ing it works where it needs to.”

The EL9 offers faster, qui­eter and more cost-effec­tive flights. The air­craft oper­ates at one-third the cost of a heli­copter or eVTOL and is 100 times qui­eter. It inte­grates with exist­ing avi­a­tion sys­tems and is ready to deploy where demand already exists. 

The EL9 already has over 2,200 pre-orders from more than 60 glob­al oper­a­tors.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.electra.aero

https://www.surfair.com

(Top image: Elec­tra EL9 Air­craft)

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