ERC System begins flight testing its full-size Romeo prototype, one of Europe’s heaviest and largest eVTOL aircraft

Munich start­up ERC Sys­tem has begun flight test­ing of its full-size, third-gen­er­a­tion pro­to­type of its eVTOL air­craft pro­to­type, known as Romeo.

Weigh­ing near­ly three tonnes and sport­ing a 16-metre wingspan, ERC says Romeo is among the largest and heav­i­est eVTOL air­craft flown in Europe so far. Flight test­ing ini­tial­ly began back in Novem­ber 2025.

Dr. David Löbl, Co-Founder and CEO of ERC Sys­tem, said: “We are excit­ed to have reached this key mile­stone in our mis­sion to make aer­i­al trans­porta­tion more eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble, espe­cial­ly for crit­i­cal mis­sions.

“The crewed air­craft we intend to cer­ti­fy in 2031 is hybrid-elec­tric. It takes off and lands ver­ti­cal­ly like a heli­copter but uses wings to cruise effi­cient­ly like an air­plane. This allows us to oper­ate at a frac­tion of the cost of heli­copters, while reduc­ing trans­port times sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared to less cost­ly, but slow­er ground-based vehi­cles. A clear ben­e­fit for crit­i­cal mis­sions, such as in inter­hos­pi­tal patient trans­ports.”

Its suc­cess­ful maid­en flight comes as the start­up inten­si­fies strate­gic part­ner­ships with air­res­cue and HEMS oper­a­tors and pre­pares an exten­sion into the uncrewed aer­i­al logis­tics mar­ket.

ERC’s flight tests on full-size, full-mass pro­to­types are intend­ed to tack­le the chal­lenges of fly­ing heavy
eVTOL air­craft as ear­ly as pos­si­ble in the devel­op­ment process.

This approach rep­re­sents an under­ly­ing devel­op­ment phi­los­o­phy, which ERC has imple­ment­ed since the first full-mass pro­to­type ‘Echo’ took to the air in 2023. The learn­ings gen­er­at­ed dur­ing the cur­rent flight test cam­paign will inform the devel­op­ment of ERC’s first com­mer­cial­ly avail­able air­craft.

Lead­ing HEMS oper­a­tors from Ger­many, Switzer­land, Aus­tria, and beyond are already on board. DRF
Luftret­tung, a glob­al leader in this field, has com­mit­ted to a strate­gic part­ner­ship.

Dr. Krys­t­ian Pracz, CEO of DRF Luftret­tung, said: ”The prototype’s suc­cess­ful maid­en flight rep­re­sents the tran­si­tion from con­cept to prac­ti­cal test­ing. As a key strate­gic part­ner of ERC Sys­tem, DRF Luftret­tung is con­tribut­ing med­ical, tech­ni­cal, and flight oper­a­tions exper­tise from over five decades of air res­cue expe­ri­ence.

“Togeth­er, we are devel­op­ing an addi­tion­al option for patient trans­port and emer­gency med­ical ser­vices. Cur­rent trends in health­care – the reduc­tion and spe­cial­iza­tion of clin­ics, longer dis­tances, and an increas­ing short­age of skilled work­ers – require new solu­tions.

“That is why we are con­vinced that the ERC air­craft will have a per­ma­nent place in our fleet in the 2030s – as a use­ful addi­tion to estab­lished air res­cue with res­cue heli­copters.”

ERC’s flag­ship prod­uct will be a crewed, hybrid-elec­tric lift-and-cruise air­craft opti­mized for inter-hos­pi­tal patient trans­port. Found­ed in 2020 by expe­ri­enced aero­space pro­fes­sion­als, ERC cur­rent­ly has approx­i­mate­ly 60 employ­ees and is backed by aero­space pow­er­house IABG, a lead­ing provider of test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ser­vices for air­craft, space­craft, and defense solu­tions.

The com­pa­ny has con­firmed it intends to add an uncrewed car­go air­craft (UAS) to its port­fo­lio, cap­i­tal­iz­ing on its five-year expe­ri­ence of build­ing and test­ing heavy uncrewed pro­to­types. The com­pa­ny is expect­ed to release details of the uncrewed prod­uct by Q2 2026.

One Test at a Time: ERC’S cur­rent flight test cam­paign

ERC System’s third-gen­er­a­tion pro­to­type “Romeo” first took to the air in Novem­ber 2025 at the ERC Flight Test Cen­ter near Munich, Ger­many.

The aircraft’s maid­en flight marked the start of the company’s lat­est flight test cam­paign, which serves to val­i­date the core flight char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ERC’s vehi­cle archi­tec­ture under rep­re­sen­ta­tive mass and sys­tem con­di­tions. A par­tic­u­lar focus of the cur­rent test phase is placed on ver­ti­cal take­off, slow and con­trolled maneu­vers, and ver­ti­cal land­ing

Romeo is the heav­i­est ful­ly elec­tric eVTOL flown to date in the Euro­pean Union, based on pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion. The air­craft fea­tures eight elec­tri­cal­ly dri­ven ver­ti­cal lift units pow­er­ing rotors of approx­i­mate­ly 2.4 meters in diam­e­ter, as well as a large cab­in rep­re­sen­ta­tive of ERC’s future med­ical trans­port con­fig­u­ra­tion.

It is ful­ly elec­tric, in con­trast to the hybrid-elec­tric pro­duc­tion air­craft set to enter ser­vice in 2031, as the focus of the flight test cam­paign is on the take-off and land­ing phas­es. Both will be exe­cut­ed in ful­ly elec­tric mode going for­ward

While the future pro­duc­tion air­craft will be oper­at­ed with a pilot on board, the cur­rent flight test­ing is exe­cut­ed in an uncrewed con­fig­u­ra­tion. The test pilot con­trols the air­craft remote­ly from a ground con­trol sta­tion. Remote­ly pilot­ed flight test­ing is an effec­tive way to increase safe­ty and reduce costs in the ear­ly phas­es of devel­op­ment and test­ing.

The cur­rent flight test cam­paign will pro­vide crit­i­cal insights that pave the way for both the tech­ni­cal foun­da­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the future manned pro­duc­tion air­craft