Overair reveals its Butterfly eVTOL design and aims for certification in the US and Asia-Pacific markets by 2025

Overair has revealed the com­mer­cial design of its rev­o­lu­tion­ary But­ter­fly eVTOL, which the com­pa­ny says is the cul­mi­na­tion of decades of mil­i­tary-grade ver­ti­cal flight tech­nol­o­gy.

Until now, Overair’s rapid­ly grow­ing team of engi­neers and tech­ni­cians have been oper­at­ing in stealth mode — inte­grat­ing tech­nolo­gies from more than 20 years of aero­space inno­va­tion led by Abe Karem.

Amid the ris­ing focus on reduc­ing aviation’s car­bon foot­print, Overair expects to cer­ti­fy But­ter­fly with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) in 2025.

Fol­low­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the com­pa­ny will launch com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in the US and South Korea, where it will work with Han­wha Sys­tems — which has invest­ed $25 mil­lion in Overair and now owns 30 per cent of the com­pa­ny.

Both com­pa­nies are in the final stages of devel­op­ing an elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem and will soon begin ini­tial tests.

The Kore­an defense con­trac­tor has invest­ed $25 mil­lion in Overair and now owns 30 per cent of the com­pa­ny, which is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing the first pro­to­type of Karem Aircraft’s But­ter­fly eVTOL mod­el.

Ben Tign­er, Overair CEO, said: “Overair intends to com­mer­cialise Butterfly’s com­pet­i­tive advan­tages to become a glob­al leader in advanced air mobil­i­ty, ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ing to meet demand as a man­u­fac­tur­er, main­tain­er, and oper­a­tor. “This is just a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent type of air­craft.

“But­ter­fly is a trans­porta­tion sys­tem opti­mised for safe­ty, util­i­sa­tion, pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence, and afford­abil­i­ty. Our goal is to become a trust­ed part of our rid­ers’ dai­ly rou­tines and a trust­ed part­ner for the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.”

Lever­ag­ing that lega­cy of the Depart­ment of Defense and pri­vate­ly backed tech­nol­o­gy, Overair says But­ter­fly is designed to be the most robust, effi­cient, and qui­et air­craft in its class – pro­duc­ing zero emis­sions when in flight.

Butterfly’s unique capa­bil­i­ty stems from its break­through propul­sion sys­tem, known as Opti­mum Speed Propul­sion (OSP). Butterfly’s four large pro­pellers spin slow­ly in hov­er and even slow­er cruise, result­ing in two pri­ma­ry aero­dy­nam­ic advan­tages.

The props are so effi­cient that hov­er flight con­sumes only a small frac­tion of the avail­able motor pow­er, giv­ing But­ter­fly extra pay­load capac­i­ty and pow­er mar­gins to oper­ate safe­ly in chal­leng­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions. As the slow-turn­ing props pro­duce very lit­tle noise, they opti­mise But­ter­fly for high-den­si­ty routes over sen­si­tive com­mu­ni­ties.

Butterfly’s nov­el design also com­bines the low ener­gy and main­te­nance costs of all-elec­tric vehi­cles with the robust flight qual­i­ties of OSP, unlock­ing a reli­able avi­a­tion solu­tion over con­gest­ed met­ro­pol­i­tan areas.