Vertical Aerospace Announces “First European Piloted eVTOL Flight in Open Airspace”

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space announced this week “it has made Euro­pean avi­a­tion his­to­ry” with the first-ever pilot­ed wing-borne flight of a winged eVTOL air­craft in open air­space, reports a press release.

This land­mark flight of the VX4 pro­to­type, pilot­ed by Chief Test Pilot Simon Davies, had the air­craft take-off, fly and land like a con­ven­tion­al air­craft, with lift gen­er­at­ed by the wing.

The release says, “Soar­ing across the UK coun­try­side from Cotswold Air­port, the VX4 pro­to­type demon­strat­ed con­trolled wing-borne flight in open air­space for the first time, mark­ing a crit­i­cal step toward com­mer­cial deploy­ment as part of Vertical’s Flight­path 2030 strat­e­gy.”

The UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) approved the flight from the Cotswold Air­port by extend­ing Vertical’s Per­mit to Fly, after a review of tens of thou­sands of pages of safe­ty and tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion.

The Ver­ti­cal Aero­space Team Cel­e­brat­ing The Land­mark Flight

Davies remarked, “Tak­ing the air­craft beyond the air­field and cruis­ing over the Cotswolds for the first time was tru­ly spe­cial and a career high­light for me. Our per­for­mance pre­dic­tions were absolute­ly spot on and the air­craft took off as a nat­ur­al exten­sion of all the ground tests and prepa­ra­tion we’ve done.”

He con­tin­ued, “The VX4 was not only safe but an absolute plea­sure to fly. It is respon­sive, smooth, sim­ple to oper­ate and the sound lev­el from the pro­pellers is qui­et and pleas­ant in the cock­pit.”

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, added, “This is an impor­tant moment in our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion jour­ney. Oper­at­ing under the UK’s rig­or­ous reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work means we share the bur­den of safe­ty with our reg­u­la­tor, where every step must be approved. It amounts to a mini cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our pro­to­type and gives us a clear­er, faster path to type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

By achiev­ing sta­ble and con­trolled wing-borne flight, Ver­ti­cal has tak­en a sig­nif­i­cant step toward the next major mile­stone: a full pilot­ed tran­si­tion flight, expect­ed in the sec­ond half of the year. This will demon­strate the VX4’s abil­i­ty to shift eas­i­ly between ver­ti­cal lift and for­ward cruise, the oper­at­ing mode it will use in pas­sen­ger ser­vice.

UK Sec­re­tary of State for Busi­ness and Trade, Jonathan Reynolds, com­ment­ed,  “Break­throughs like this show how gov­ern­ment and busi­ness can work togeth­er to keep the UK at the cut­ting edge of inno­va­tion. Our mod­ern Indus­tri­al Strat­e­gy will dou­ble down on this suc­cess by giv­ing investors the con­fi­dence they need to back UK advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing for the long term, bring­ing good, green jobs and growth across the UK as part of our Plan for Change.”

Dur­ing the wing-borne flight phase, the VX4 can reach speeds of up to 150 mph and alti­tudes close to 2,000 ft under real-world con­di­tions. Engi­neers cap­tured more than 30,000 in-flight data para­me­ters, con­firm­ing the air­craft per­formed excep­tion­al­ly across sta­bil­i­ty, con­trol and ener­gy usage.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://vertical-aerospace.com/

(Images: Ver­ti­cal Aero­space)

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