Electra’s EL9 Hybrid-Electric Ultra Short aircraft achieves breakthrough wind tunnel performance

Elec­tra has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed pow­ered wind tun­nel test­ing for its nine-pas­sen­ger EL9 Ultra Short hybrid-elec­tric air­craft, con­firm­ing the com­pa­ny’s blown wing design deliv­ers the high lift need­ed for take­off and land­ing in just 150 feet.

This is 10 per cent the dis­tance typ­i­cal­ly required by con­ven­tion­al air­craft of the same size.
 
Using a 20 per­cent scale mod­el of the EL9 wing, the tests demon­strat­ed lift coef­fi­cients greater than 20 — 7x greater than the 2.5 — 3 range typ­i­cal of unblown wings.

The results val­i­date the poten­tial of elec­tric blown lift to increase the wing’s lift­ing capa­bil­i­ty at low speeds, enabling safe take­off and land­ing oper­a­tions from soc­cer field-sized spaces.

The tests also con­firm the EL9’s approach and land­ing pro­file meets all FAA Part 23 safe­ty and stall mar­gin require­ments, ensur­ing safe and pre­dictable han­dling at slow speeds.

Chris Courtin, Direc­tor of Tech­nol­o­gy Devel­op­ment at Elec­tra, said: “This is a major mile­stone in demon­strat­ing the EL9’s abil­i­ty to take off and land in spaces nev­er before pos­si­ble for fixed-wing air­craft.

“Ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the effec­tive­ness of the opti­mized EL9 wing shows that the EL9 is both trans­for­ma­tive and prac­ti­cal. These results give us high con­fi­dence in our abil­i­ty to accu­rate­ly pre­dict the impacts of elec­tric blown lift on the air­craft, bring­ing us clos­er to mak­ing our vision of Direct Avi­a­tion a real­i­ty.”
 
This break­through design opens the door to a range of new capa­bil­i­ties for com­mer­cial and defense oper­a­tors, includ­ing enabling air oper­a­tors to con­nect com­mu­ni­ties that lack avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture, fly into air­ports with strict noise restric­tions, cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties and busi­ness mod­els for car­go ser­vices, and save trav­el­ers sig­nif­i­cant time and has­sle.

It also intro­duces entire­ly new logis­tics capa­bil­i­ties for warfight­ers includ­ing the abil­i­ty to land on unim­proved sur­faces, improve safe­ty and reduce cost, pow­er ground oper­a­tions, and car­ry out crit­i­cal logis­tics trans­port.

 The US Army col­lab­o­rat­ed with fund­ing for the test­ing through a Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) con­tract as it explores the poten­tial for Electra’s blown wing tech­nol­o­gy and dual use hybrid-elec­tric air­craft to expand its mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties.
 
The com­pa­ny is fur­ther refin­ing the design of its EL9 pro­duc­tion air­craft on the basis of these find­ings and its ongo­ing flight tests and demon­stra­tions of the EL2 demon­stra­tor air­craft, advanc­ing the devel­op­ment of a qui­eter, more effi­cient, and sus­tain­able future for region­al air mobil­i­ty.
 
Elec­tra has over 2,200 pre-orders for the EL9 from more than 50 oper­a­tors world­wide, val­ued at more than $10 bil­lion — one of the largest order pipelines in the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty sec­tor.

The first test flights are planned for 2027, with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial ser­vice entry antic­i­pat­ed in 2029 under FAA Part 23 reg­u­la­tions.

Elec­tra’s CEO Marc Allen was a recent guest on the eVTOL Insights’ pod­cast show. Click here to lis­ten to the episode.