US Air Force pilots complete first manned demo flight in BETA’s ALIA eVTOL aircraft as part of Agility Prime programme

Two Unit­ed States Air Force pilots have flown BETA Tech­nolo­gies’ ALIA eVTOL air­craft — in what is described as the first-ever manned demo flight with an Agili­ty Prime part­ner.

This mile­stone — which is the cul­mi­na­tion of a two-year part­ner­ship between BETA and the Agili­ty Prime pro­gramme — was com­plet­ed on March 9th by George ‘HOG’ Grif­fiths, AFWERX Air­wor­thi­ness and Test Lead and Chief of Engi­neer­ing, and Major Jonathan Apple­by. It took place at BETA’s hangar and test­ing facil­i­ty in Platts­burgh, New York, locat­ed 35 miles from its South Burling­ton, Ver­mont head­quar­ters.

Grif­fiths said: “BETA has devel­oped a unique eVTOL air sys­tem that is the com­plete pack­age and includes an air vehi­cle and charg­ing net­work that will sure­ly com­pete well in this emerg­ing com­pet­i­tive mar­ket.

“How­ev­er, that is not sur­pris­ing for a com­pa­ny that has embraced avi­a­tion; every employ­ee is encour­aged to take flight train­ing, and their office spaces over­look their hangar where all of the BETA mag­ic is hap­pen­ing. It has been a plea­sure to work and fly with such a moti­vat­ed and inno­v­a­tive group of peo­ple.”

Before com­plet­ing this his­toric test flight, Grif­fiths and Apple­by under­went exten­sive safe­ty and pre­pared­ness train­ing. They com­plet­ed inten­sive air­craft aca­d­e­mics ahead of their arrival in South Burling­ton, hav­ing received com­pre­hen­sive ALIA man­u­als and addi­tion­al mate­ri­als com­piled by the BETA engi­neers who built the air­craft.

Ground school for both USAF pilots com­menced on March 7th, which cov­ered every aspect of pilot­ing ALIA, includ­ing indi­vid­ual cours­es on its struc­tures, bat­ter­ies, elec­tric motors, flight con­trols, aero­dy­nam­ics, and avion­ics as well as pre­flight and exten­sive safe­ty train­ing.

On March 8th, both pilots under­went sim­u­la­tor train­ing, where they were able to fly the exact test flight route planned for the demon­stra­tion. Fol­low­ing this train­ing, on March 9th, Grif­fiths and Apple­by took turns pilot­ing ALIA for sev­er­al flight demon­stra­tions, becom­ing the first USAF pilots to fly in a VTOL air­craft. In the air­craft with Apple­by and Grif­fiths, respec­tive­ly, sat BETA test pilot Cam­ron Guthrie and Lochie Fer­ri­er.

Major Apple­by said: “It was a bless­ing and hon­our to con­duct the first flight for the USAF in the ALIA-250 which was designed, built, and main­tained by the ded­i­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als of BETA. Spe­cial thanks to Josh Lane and Agili­ty Prime for coor­di­nat­ing the test approval and exe­cu­tion and the entire BETA team for pro­vid­ing our train­ing and let­ting us fly their air­craft.

“I am excit­ed to watch BETA con­tin­ue to devel­op their rev­o­lu­tion­ary air­craft for civ­il and mil­i­tary use cas­es and grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence elec­tric flight.”

Since part­ner­ing in 2020, engi­neers from the USAF have worked along­side BETA’s flight test team to devel­op and refine the ALIA air­craft to make elec­tric avi­a­tion a real­i­ty. ALIA has made sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal advance­ments through­out the part­ner­ship. In addi­tion to last week’s achieve­ment, in 2021, BETA was also award­ed USAF’s first air­wor­thi­ness approval for a crewed elec­tric air­craft. The part­ner­ship is cur­rent­ly oper­at­ing under a Phase II Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) con­tract.

Grif­fiths spoke to the val­ue of this demon­stra­tion to the future use case deter­mi­na­tions and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of eVTOL air­craft for both defense and com­mer­cial appli­ca­tion.

He added: “Today’s USAF qual­i­ta­tive eval­u­a­tion flight is the first of many that we will be doing with BETA Tech­nolo­gies and our oth­er Agili­ty Prime ven­dors. In addi­tion to accel­er­at­ing these com­pa­nies’ path to FAA type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by pro­vid­ing access to USAF engi­neer­ing exper­tise and test infra­struc­ture, we are also eval­u­at­ing these pro­to­types for oppor­tu­ni­ties to utilise them for unique mil­i­tary mis­sions. We need gov­ern­ment pilots to accom­plish those eval­u­a­tions and this is the first step in devel­op­ing the train­ing and exper­i­men­ta­tion plans to do so.”

BETA’s ALIA air­craft has been in devel­op­ment for more than three years and although cre­at­ed to be a car­go car­ri­er, fit­ting a pilot and three stan­dard pal­lets, it can also seat up to five pas­sen­gers. ALIA is a nod to the Arc­tic tern, which trav­els fur­ther than any oth­er migra­to­ry bird and cov­ers near­ly 25,000 miles.

With ALIA, BETA has a tar­get range of 250 nau­ti­cal miles and a cur­rent top speed of approx­i­mate­ly 150 knots, with a recharge time of under an hour and a wingspan of 50 feet. In addi­tion to the air­craft, BETA is also rolling out a cross-coun­try charg­ing infra­struc­ture to pow­er elec­tric trans­porta­tion.

To date, the com­pa­ny has more than 60 charg­ing sta­tions online or in devel­op­ment from Ver­mont to Arkansas, with addi­tion­al sites planned.

Kyle Clark, BETA founder and CEO, express­es his excite­ment for BETA’s con­tin­u­ing part­ner­ship with the USAF through Agili­ty Prime. He said: “For over two years, we’ve worked hand-in-hand with the Air Force Agili­ty Prime team to refine our elec­tric air­craft, and we’ve made great progress togeth­er.

“It’s an hon­our to have Hank Grif­fiths and Major Apple­by fly our air­craft, and we’re hum­bled by the Air Force’s con­tin­ued sup­port and con­fi­dence in our engi­neer­ing. This flight sig­ni­fies an impor­tant mile­stone, pro­vid­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for a clean future for our nation’s mil­i­tary and a path to fos­sil fuel inde­pen­dence.”

Colonel Nathan Diller, Direc­tor of AFWERX, not­ed that mile­stones such as this accom­plish­ment are fur­ther­ing AFWERX Agili­ty Prime’s mis­sion to accel­er­ate capa­bil­i­ties for both com­mer­cial and defense use. He added: “The first flight of a ser­vice mem­ber in an elec­tric air­craft with a Depart­ment of Defense air­wor­thi­ness marks a key mile­stone in expand­ing the safe­ty, afford­abil­i­ty, avail­abil­i­ty, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of air trav­el.”