Vertical Aerospace’s VX4 prototype completes world first public airport-to-airport flight, full-scale aircraft on display at RIAT

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has com­plet­ed the world’s first air­port-to-air­port pilot­ed flight by a full-scale, winged tilt-rotor eVTOL designed for com­mer­cial ser­vice. 

Fol­low­ing Flight Con­di­tions and Per­mit to Fly approvals from the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA), the VX4 pro­to­type flew 17 miles from Ver­ti­cal’s Flight Test Cen­ter at Cotswold Air­port, to RAF Fair­ford. It reached speeds of 115mph and flew at an alti­tude of 1,800ft.

The mile­stone also marked the air­craft’s first land­ing at a pub­lic loca­tion. It will now be on dis­play at the Roy­al Inter­na­tion­al Air Tat­too (RIAT), the world’s largest mil­i­tary air show, from tomor­row (Fri­day) to Sun­day, July 20th.

Simon Davies, Vertical’s Chief Test Pilot, who flew the full scale VX4 pro­to­type, said: “Fly­ing the VX4 from air­port to air­port is a major mile­stone, and a pow­er­ful demon­stra­tion of the real-world capa­bil­i­ty of the air­craft.

“To bring it to RIAT, among some of the world’s most advanced mil­i­tary air­craft, is a proud moment — and a pow­er­ful sig­nal of the role that a new gen­er­a­tion of air­craft will play in defence and spe­cial mis­sion oper­a­tions.”

Only elec­tric air­craft to be show­cased at the Roy­al Inter­na­tion­al Air Tat­too

Ver­ti­cal’s full scale VX4 pro­to­type is the only elec­tric air­craft pres­ence at RIAT 2025 — as part of its broad­er strat­e­gy to unlock new hybrid-elec­tric appli­ca­tions in defence, logis­tics, and spe­cial mis­sions. 

With the recent launch of its hybrid-elec­tric vari­ant, Ver­ti­cal says it is posi­tioned to deliv­er clean­er, qui­eter, and more ver­sa­tile avi­a­tion solu­tions for a range of gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary use cas­es.

The com­pa­ny’s sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion hybrid-propul­sion sys­tem, which has been in devel­op­ment for 18 months at the Ver­ti­cal Ener­gy Cen­tre, will be retro­fit­ted into one of the company’s VX4 full scale pro­to­types and is expect­ed to com­mence flight test­ing in Q2 2026.

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “RIAT is a glob­al stage for the most advanced, mis­sion-ready aero­space tech­nol­o­gy, and we’re proud to show­case how elec­tric avi­a­tion will sup­port the future of defence.

“Our hybrid-elec­tric roadmap unlocks new capa­bil­i­ties for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, and Vertical’s RIAT pres­ence rein­forces our com­mit­ment to play­ing a mean­ing­ful role in the future of mil­i­tary and spe­cial mis­sion avi­a­tion.”

About VX4 hybrid-elec­tric vari­ant

New long-range vari­ant will be adapt­ed from the all-elec­tric VX4, tar­get­ed for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to the high­est safe­ty stan­dards in 2028:

• Range: Up to 1,000 miles, a 10-fold increase from its all-elec­tric air­craft
• Pay­load: Con­fig­urable to car­ry up to 1,100 kilo­grams in the VX4’s class-lead­ing air­frame capac­i­ty
• Stealth advan­tages: Low noise and heat sig­na­tures make the hybrid vari­ant well-suit­ed for sen­si­tive mis­sions
• Crewed and uncrewed capa­bil­i­ties: Hybrid-elec­tric tech­nol­o­gy capa­ble of being deployed autonomous­ly, remote­ly, or with a pilot. Uncrewed capa­bil­i­ties can be seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed into the exist­ing Flight Con­trol Sys­tem being devel­oped by Hon­ey­well
• Mis­sion resilience: Built off the VX4’s indus­try-lead­ing redun­dan­cy and dam­age tol­er­ance, boost­ing con­fi­dence for mis­sion-crit­i­cal oper­a­tions

With more than 200,000 vis­i­tors expect­ed and par­tic­i­pa­tion from more than 25 nations, RIAT also offers Ver­ti­cal a valu­able plat­form to engage defence stake­hold­ers, investors, and the glob­al aero­space com­mu­ni­ty on emerg­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties.

RIAT is organ­ised by the Roy­al Air Force Char­i­ta­ble Trust, with pro­ceeds sup­port­ing avi­a­tion edu­ca­tion and youth devel­op­ment.