Vertical Aerospace’s Final Full-Scale Prototype Completes First Piloted Flight 

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space’s lat­est full-scale pro­to­type air­craft has com­plet­ed its maid­en pilot­ed flight at the Com­pa­ny’s Flight Test Cen­tre in the UK, mark­ing the start of an expand­ed flight test cam­paign.

Test Pilot Paul Stone con­duct­ed the flight at 8:49 BST on June 5th, while the Com­pa­ny’s exist­ing pro­to­type con­tin­ues tran­si­tion flight test­ing, hav­ing com­plet­ed mul­ti­ple pilot­ed tran­si­tion flights.

The flight fol­lows the issuance of a new Per­mit to Fly from the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) after exten­sive ground test­ing and air­craft val­i­da­tion activ­i­ties.

The new pro­to­type is the final air­craft to join Ver­ti­cal’s flight test fleet before the Com­pa­ny com­pletes Crit­i­cal Design Review (CDR), a major pro­gramme mile­stone that estab­lish­es the design base­line for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Fol­low­ing CDR, Ver­ti­cal will begin prepa­ra­tions for assem­bly of its first pre-pro­duc­tion air­craft as it con­tin­ues toward cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial ser­vice. 

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “Get­ting our lat­est pro­to­type into flight test­ing is an impor­tant mile­stone because it allows us to learn faster in real world con­di­tions and keep build­ing momen­tum towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Expand­ing the flight test fleet will help us val­i­date the air­craft more quick­ly, reduce risk, and move more effi­cient­ly towards bring­ing Valo into ser­vice.”

This air­craft dou­bles the Company’s flight test­ing capac­i­ty and sup­ports addi­tion­al pub­lic demon­stra­tions this year. Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of all flight test phas­es — thrust­borne, wing­borne and tran­si­tion flight — in its all-elec­tric con­fig­u­ra­tion, Ver­ti­cal intends to retro­fit this pro­to­type for hybrid-elec­tric flight test­ing.

The hybrid-elec­tric vari­ant is expect­ed to sup­port appli­ca­tions demand­ing greater range and pay­load capa­bil­i­ty across defense, logis­tics, and wider com­mer­cial sec­tors. 

The pro­to­type shares the same con­fig­u­ra­tion as Ver­ti­cal’s cur­rent full-scale air­craft, which has already com­plet­ed all flight test phas­es.

Ver­ti­cal’s flight test pro­gramme is built around full-scale, pilot­ed pro­to­type air­craft with archi­tec­ture, sys­tems and flight char­ac­ter­is­tics close­ly aligned to the pro­duc­tion-stan­dard Valo air­craft, enabling the Com­pa­ny to val­i­date the tech­nolo­gies, sys­tems inte­gra­tion and flight mod­els that will sup­port cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.