Vertical Flight Society’s 16th Annual Electric Aircraft Symposium Returns to Oshkosh 23–24 July 2022

More than 40 of the world’s lead­ing elec­tric air­craft devel­op­ers will speak at the 16th Annu­al Elec­tric Air­craft Sym­po­sium (EAS) host­ed by the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS), to be held in per­son and online in Oshkosh, Wis­con­sin, on July 23–24, 2022, after two years of vir­tu­al-only pro­gram­ing.

VFS exec­u­tive direc­tor Mike Hirschberg said: “The elec­tric-pow­ered air­craft indus­try is gain­ing momen­tum with invest­ments top­ping $10 bil­lion in the past five years.

“EAS pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get com­pre­hen­sive updates on the state of the indus­try, and dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion (DEP) is a com­mon ele­ment in most elec­tric-pow­ered air­craft designs as they face sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion chal­lenges.”

The devel­op­ment of eVTOL, elec­tric short take­off and land­ing (eSTOL) and elec­tric con­ven­tion­al take­off and land­ing (eCTOL) air­craft promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce air trans­porta­tion costs and enable new advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) mar­kets.

Exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (CAMI) Yolan­ka Wulff added: “In 2007, the Com­par­a­tive Air­craft Flight Effi­cien­cy (CAFE) Foun­da­tion orga­nized the world’s first Elec­tric Air­craft Sym­po­sium to address emerg­ing inter­est in elec­tric propul­sion, which helped to cre­ate the grow­ing indus­try you see today,” .

This year’s EAS will present more than 40 experts from indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment, par­tic­i­pat­ing in 14 in-depth pan­el dis­cus­sions cov­er­ing the full spec­trum of top­ics includ­ing elec­tric air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tions, propul­sion sys­tems, com­mu­ni­ty inte­gra­tion, demand fore­cast­ing, auton­o­my, ver­ti­ports, noise, urban oper­a­tions, train­ing, AAM com­pe­ti­tions, car­go, hydro­gen propul­sion, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, region­al air mobil­i­ty and defense/public ser­vices.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions include AeroTEC, AFWERX, Airflow.aero, ACI Air­port Coun­cil Inter­na­tion­al, Ampaire, Arup, Aut­oFlightX, Auton­o­dyne, Beta Tech­nolo­gies, Bris­tow, Bye Aero­space, Black & Veatch, CAMI, Crown Con­sult­ing, Dia­mond Air­craft, EASA, Electra.aero, Elroy Air, Evi­a­tion, EVE Air Mobil­i­ty, Hartzell, Hon­ey­well, Inter­na­tion­al Vehi­cle Research, Joby Avi­a­tion, Lil­i­um, Ohio UAS Cen­ter, Nation­al Aero­nau­tic Asso­ci­a­tion (NAA), NEXA Advi­sors, Pipistrel/Textron eAv­i­a­tion, Rolls-Royce Elec­tri­cal, Sky­ports, Super­nal, Swan­son Avi­a­tion Con­sul­tan­cy, UC Berke­ley, Urban Move­ment Labs, Wisk, Whis­per Aero, Volo­copter, Xwing and ZeroAvia.

Ear­li­er this month, VFS announced the win­ners of its sec­ond annu­al Design-Build-Ver­ti­cal Flight (DBVF) Stu­dent Com­pe­ti­tion, sup­port­ed by ARL, and spon­sored by Sur­vice Engi­neer­ing and Wisk Aero as Gold and Bronze spon­sors.

In April, VFS announced three com­pet­i­tive­ly select­ed engi­neer­ing stu­dents at US minor­i­ty-serv­ing insti­tu­tions for its inau­gur­al 2022 Diver­si­Flite Schol­ars pro­gramme, con­sist­ing of 225 tech­ni­cal papers from over 30 invit­ed pre­sen­ta­tions by lead­ers in indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment, and near­ly 80 exhibitors.