UK: Loganair and BETA Technologies Complete Electric Flight Demos on Royal Mail Postal Routes across Scotland

Loganair, the UK’s largest region­al air­line, has worked with BETA Tech­nolo­gies to launch a series of elec­tric flights across Scot­land, which will be used to inform the Roy­al Mail on how it can use BETA’s ALIA CTOL air­craft to deliv­er let­ters and parcels to remote com­mu­ni­ties in the coun­try.

The first of a series of demon­stra­tion flights across Scotland’s region­al air­port net­work took place last Fri­day between Glas­gow and Dundee, with fur­ther flights planned between Aberdeen, Inver­ness, Wick and Orkney.

The flights will car­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tive let­ters and parcels, repli­cat­ing the dai­ly mail flights Loganair oper­ates so Roy­al Mail can deliv­er to Orkney and the wider Scot­tish High­lands and Islands.

The demon­stra­tion series is designed to show how elec­tric air­craft could inte­grate into this exist­ing net­work with­out dis­rup­tion, using the same air­ports. 

Luke Fara­jal­lah, CEO at Loganair, said: “This is a land­mark day for Euro­pean avi­a­tion, and in-par­tic­u­lar for Scotland’s air­line Loganair. We are not talk­ing about con­cepts, pro­to­types, or dis­tant ambi­tion, this is a real tan­gi­ble pro­gramme of fly­ing across our net­work which will pro­vide invalu­able data on how an elec­tric air­craft could per­form in a real com­mer­cial envi­ron­ment.”

Roy­al Mail is the only deliv­ery com­pa­ny to deliv­er to all 32 mil­lion address­es in the UK every day, includ­ing the country’s most remote com­mu­ni­ties. Ful­fill­ing this Uni­ver­sal Ser­vice Oblig­a­tion on routes across the Scot­tish High­lands and Islands depends on a com­plex net­work of road, sea and air, and on Loganair’s six decades of expe­ri­ence con­nect­ing com­mu­ni­ties that depend entire­ly on reli­able air con­nec­tions.

Roy­al Mail announced it was halv­ing its use of domes­tic flights in 2024 as part of its Net-Zero by 2040 strat­e­gy, keep­ing only essen­tial routes. Elec­tri­fy­ing some of the remain­ing mail flights would fur­ther reduce Roy­al Mail’s emis­sions, build­ing on wider work includ­ing the use of 8,000 elec­tric vans for deliv­er­ies and the use of drones to con­nect island com­mu­ni­ties.

Chris Pax­ton, Strate­gic Insight and Inno­va­tion Man­ag­er at Roy­al Mail, said: “This is an impor­tant step towards mak­ing elec­tric mail flights a real­i­ty for some of the UK’s most remote com­mu­ni­ties.

“By work­ing with Loganair and BETA Tech­nolo­gies, we’re proud to be the first UK deliv­ery com­pa­ny to test an elec­tric air­craft, sup­port­ing our jour­ney to Net-Zero by 2040 while con­tin­u­ing to serve all 32 mil­lion address­es across the UK.”

BETA’s ALIA CTOL air­craft is designed for region­al car­go and pas­sen­ger oper­a­tion and requires no new air­port infra­struc­ture. It oper­ates from exist­ing run­ways and recharges in approx­i­mate­ly 20 to 40 min­utes using BETA’s fast-charg­ing sys­tem.

With a max demon­strat­ed range of 336 nau­ti­cal miles and a pay­load capac­i­ty of up to 560kg, the air­craft is well matched to the high-fre­quen­cy region­al routes that define Loganair’s Scot­tish net­work.

Simon Newitt, Head of Sales and Sup­port at BETA Tech­nolo­gies, added: “Scot­land’s geog­ra­phy makes it one of the most com­pelling envi­ron­ments for elec­tric avi­a­tion any­where in the world — short routes, exist­ing infra­struc­ture, and com­mu­ni­ties that have depend­ed on reli­able air con­nec­tions for gen­er­a­tions.

“Fly­ing real postal routes along­side an oper­a­tor with Loganair’s expe­ri­ence is exact­ly how you val­i­date this tech­nol­o­gy. We’re proud to be work­ing with part­ners like Loganair and Roy­al Mail, who recog­nise that keep­ing these com­mu­ni­ties con­nect­ed and doing it sus­tain­ably are not com­pet­ing pri­or­i­ties.”

All images used are cred­it­ed to Loganair