New milestone achieved for Overair as it completes full-scale assembly of Butterfly prototype

Overair has com­plet­ed assem­bly of the first full-scale pro­to­type of its But­ter­fly eVTOL air­craft, rep­re­sent­ing a key mile­stone on the com­pa­ny’s roadmap.

The news fol­lows the val­i­da­tion of their full-scale propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy via a 2022 truck-based test. This achieve­ment sig­nals the start of Overair’s vehi­cle lev­el test­ing phase at its San­ta Ana, Cal­i­for­nia head­quar­ters, before mov­ing the air­craft to their expan­sive flight test facil­i­ty in Vic­torville, Cal­i­for­nia.

Ini­tial tests, sched­uled to begin in ear­ly 2024, will focus on val­i­dat­ing Butterfly’s propul­sion sys­tems, flight con­trol mechan­ics, safe­ty fea­tures, and oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy. The test­ing will also assess the air­craft’s 55-deci­bel noise tar­get and per­for­mance enve­lope across diverse flight and weath­er con­di­tions.

Ben Tign­er, CEO of Overair, said: “Assem­bling our first full-scale pro­to­type vehi­cle marks the cul­mi­na­tion of years of indus­try exper­tise, metic­u­lous devel­op­ment plan­ning, inno­v­a­tive engi­neer­ing, and the hard work of the entire Overair team. This seam­less tran­si­tion from propul­sion test­ing to a full-scale pro­to­type under­scores our ded­i­ca­tion to redefin­ing the eVTOL land­scape with safer, qui­eter, and more reli­able air­craft.”

Born out of Karem Air­craft, Overair is lever­ag­ing decades of VTOL exper­tise to effi­cient­ly devel­op, man­u­fac­ture, test and refine its vehi­cle as it pur­sues cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and oper­a­tion designed to match the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Imple­men­ta­tion Plan.

This vehi­cle will be the first ever eVTOL air­craft to be built around Opti­mum Speed Tilt Rotor (OSTR) and Indi­vid­ual Blade Con­trol (IBC) tech­nolo­gies.

OSTR tech­nol­o­gy varies pro­peller rev­o­lu­tions per minute (RPM) to increase effi­cien­cy across ver­ti­cal, tran­si­tion and for­ward flight phas­es and can reduce pow­er demand at hov­er by 60 per cent.

IBC reduces vibra­tion and pro­peller loads, enhances safe­ty, pro­vides smoother ride qual­i­ty, and low­ers main­te­nance costs. Togeth­er, these tech­nolo­gies deliv­er an effi­cient, qui­et, and reli­able propul­sion sys­tem in almost any weath­er, tem­per­a­ture, or alti­tude. Addi­tion­al­ly, with few­er mov­ing parts than tra­di­tion­al tiltro­tors and no sin­gle points of fail­ure, Overair claims it owns a unique posi­tion in the mar­ket.

Abe Karem, founder of Karem Air­craft, said: “I’m thrilled to see this vehi­cle come to life. Using these advanced tech­nolo­gies, But­ter­fly is bring­ing a com­plete­ly nov­el approach to avi­a­tion and is poised to rede­fine air trans­porta­tion.”

Butterfly’s sig­na­ture design, large­ly attrib­ut­able to its advanced propul­sion tech­nolo­gies, is unique in the eVTOL mar­ket. Fea­tur­ing four over­sized rotors – more than twice the size of those used by oth­er eVTOL OEMs — Overair’s But­ter­fly aims to be per­fect­ly suit­ed for pas­sen­ger, med­ical, car­go, and mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions.

Valerie Man­ning, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at Overair, added: “Since day one, Overair has been com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing an air­craft that extends effi­cient air trans­porta­tion to a broad­er audi­ence; an air­craft that will be wel­comed by local com­mu­ni­ties, pas­sen­gers, and oper­a­tors alike. Our pro­to­type is where we begin real-world, full-scale val­i­da­tion of these fun­da­men­tal design prin­ci­ples.”

As Overair reach­es crit­i­cal air­craft devel­op­ment mile­stones with the com­ple­tion and sub­se­quent test­ing of its full-scale pro­to­type, it is also focused on prepar­ing for future oper­a­tions.

Overair has attract­ed sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket inter­est from cus­tomers both in com­mer­cial as well as mil­i­tary, and across sev­er­al geo­gra­phies lead­ing to a deep under­stand­ing of the prod­uct-mar­ket fit, includ­ing the recent announce­ment of a SBIR award by the US Navy to fur­ther advance the IBC sys­tem.

The com­pa­ny believes that with part­ners such as Dal­las Fort-Worth Air­port, the City of Arling­ton in Texas and Jeju Island, South Korea, it will play a key role in advanc­ing the devel­op­ment of glob­al advanced air mobil­i­ty infra­struc­ture and lead­ing the deploy­ment of eVTOL oper­a­tions at scale.