Skyfly Cleared “to Conduct Axe VCA Airborne Transitions” 

The CAA has cleared the way for Skyfly to con­duct air­borne tran­si­tions for its Axe VCA (Ver­ti­cal­ly-Capa­ble Air­craft), reports a press release. 

These rep­re­sent VTOL hov­er flight and wing-borne for­ward flight modes and vice-a-ver­sa for the first time. This fol­lows suc­cess­ful hov­er test­ing in late 2024 and the com­mence­ment of wing-borne tri­als last month.

The abil­i­ty to tran­si­tion between the two flight modes in mid-air allows the Axe to ben­e­fit from the effi­cien­cy and safe­ty of a fixed-wing air­craft, com­bined with the ver­sa­til­i­ty of a heli­copter. Skyfly’s test pilots involved are Dr Bill Brooks and Phil Hall.

Michael Thomp­son, CEO of Skyfly, com­ment­ed, “We are delight­ed to reach the final stage of our test flight pro­gramme. The CAA has been instru­men­tal in facil­i­tat­ing our progress through­out this phase of our devel­op­ment and we are huge­ly grate­ful to the E‑Conditions team, the GA Unit and Licens­ing depart­ment for their ongo­ing sup­port.” 

The release explains, “The abil­i­ty to com­plete these tran­si­tions with­out rely­ing on mov­ing parts such as rotat­ing motors or vec­tored thrust, is a crit­i­cal design fea­ture of the Axe and a major dif­fer­en­tia­tor to oth­er VCAs and eVTOLs, allow­ing the Axe VCA to har­ness the safe­ty and per­for­mance ben­e­fits of a both fixed-wing and rotary-wing air­craft.”

Dr Bill Brooks

It con­tin­ues, “Fly­ing in a nose-high atti­tude, lift will be pro­vid­ed by the Axe’s eight motors, pow­er­ing four large rotors, allow­ing the Axe to take off and land like a heli­copter. To achieve for­ward flight, the nose is pitched down so that the rotors pro­vide for­ward propul­sion and the wings, rather than the motors, pro­duce lift. This results in high­er speed and ener­gy effi­cien­cy than a pure­ly rotor-borne air­craft, as well as the abil­i­ty to glide to safe­ty in the unlike­ly event of a com­plete loss of pow­er.” 

The Axe is avail­able to pre-order via Skyfly­’s web­site:-

www.skyflytech.com/order

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyfly.aero

(Top image: Axe Air­craft)

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