Opener’s BlackFly to be flown at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2021 in first piloted eVTOL demonstration flights

Open­er will per­form the first pub­lic manned flights of its Black­Fly eVTOL air­craft at next week’s Elec­tric Air­craft Asso­ci­a­tion’s Air­Ven­ture in Oshkosh, Wis­con­sin — which takes place from July 26th-31st.

First revealed in 2018, Black­Fly is described as the world’s first all fixed-wing, ultra­light eVTOL air­craft. Mea­sur­ing 13ft 7′ wide and 13ft 5′ long, Black­Fly has a range of about 25 miles with 20 per cent reserves in the USA, with the range extend­ing to more than 40 miles inter­na­tion­al­ly. It does­n’t require a pilot’s licence to fly in the USA, but Open­er has advised oper­a­tors to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the com­pa­ny-man­dat­ed vehi­cle famil­iari­sa­tion and oper­a­tor train­ing.

In terms of speed, Black­Fly has a lim­it­ed cruise speed of 62 miles in the USA, with the num­ber increas­ing to over 80mph for use out­side of the coun­try.

On Open­er’s web­site, the com­pa­ny claims Black­Fly­’s noise con­sump­tion is 72 dBA when mea­sured at 150ft while its ener­gy con­sump­tion is 245 watt-hours per mile — com­pared to 270 wh/hr for a con­ven­tion­al elec­tric car.

Black­Fly has been through a rig­or­ous test­ing sched­ule, com­plet­ing more than 4,000 flights with a pay­load, 109,000 propul­sion sys­tem endurance cycles — equiv­a­lent to 139 cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tions of the Earth — and more than 500,000 propul­sion sys­tem extreme punch test cycles. To-date, the air­craft has flown more than 34,000 miles.

Open­er CEO Mar­cus Leng first cre­at­ed the con­cept for a vehi­cle in 2009, before com­plet­ing the first manned flight in a POC on Octo­ber 5th, 2011. Black­Fly­’s first flight was­n’t until 2014, with the com­pa­ny relo­cat­ing from Ontario to Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia short­ly after.

A first gen­er­a­tion manned Black­Fly vehi­cle was donat­ed to the EAA Muse­um and put on dis­play at its Air­Ven­ture event in 2019, and Open­er has been a reg­u­lar attendee to Oshkosh each year.

For more infor­ma­tion about next week’s event, vis­it https://www.eaa.org/airventure