WATCH: Vertical Aerospace Achieves Historic Piloted Thrustborne Transition of its Full-Scale eVTOL Aircraft Prototype

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has achieved pilot­ed thrust­borne tran­si­tion of a full-scale eVTOL air­craft, tak­ing off ver­ti­cal­ly like a heli­copter and tran­si­tion­ing seam­less­ly into wing­borne flight like a fixed-wing air­craft. 

On April 2nd, 2026, Test Pilot Paul Stone flew the tran­si­tion sequence at Vertical’s Flight Test Cen­tre at Cotswold Air­port. The air­craft took off ver­ti­cal­ly before the front pro­pellers tilt­ed for­ward, enabling a smooth accel­er­a­tion into wing­borne flight as the rear pro­pellers stowed, fol­lowed by a con­ven­tion­al run­way land­ing. 

Tak­ing place ear­li­er this week, the mile­stone is a first for a pilot­ed, full-scale eVTOL air­craft of this class oper­at­ing under the over­sight of the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA).

The organ­i­sa­tion is work­ing in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) toward cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Vertical’s elec­tric air­craft, Valo. 

Stu­art Simp­son, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “This marks a turn­ing point not just for Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, but for the entire advanced air mobil­i­ty indus­try.

“Achiev­ing pilot­ed thrust­borne tran­si­tion under active reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight — along­side the recent­ly announced financ­ing pack­age — demon­strates that we have solved the hard­est engi­neer­ing chal­lenges, have the reg­u­la­to­ry rela­tion­ships to com­plete cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and now have the finan­cial foun­da­tion to see this through to com­mer­cial ser­vice.” 

Addi­tion­al­ly, this is the most sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal land­mark in Vertical’s ten-year his­to­ry and rep­re­sents the com­ple­tion of the first half of the two-way tran­si­tion sequence. In two-way tran­si­tion, the air­craft takes off ver­ti­cal­ly, flies on the wing, and then decel­er­ates to land ver­ti­cal­ly — with­out the need for a run­way, enabling seam­less point to point flight from heli­pads, ver­ti­ports and rooftops. 

This flight demon­strates the aircraft’s abil­i­ty to per­form one of the most com­plex chal­lenges in avi­a­tion: trans­fer­ring lift from pro­pellers to wings in real-world con­di­tions, at full scale.

This mile­stone was achieved con­cur­rent­ly with Ver­ti­cal announc­ing an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple for a financ­ing pack­age of up to $850 mil­lion on March 30th, 2026, to pro­vide imme­di­ate cap­i­tal and access to addi­tion­al flex­i­ble cap­i­tal as the Com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to progress towards type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the com­mence­ment of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. 

David King, Chief Engi­neer at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “Com­plet­ing this pilot­ed tran­si­tion mile­stone is a pro­found achieve­ment and the result of years of engi­neer­ing inno­va­tion and dis­ci­plined test exe­cu­tion.

“The air­craft per­formed exact­ly as designed, tran­si­tion­ing smooth­ly and under full con­trol — prov­ing the core ele­ments of Vertical’s dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion and tiltro­tor tech­nol­o­gy at full scale, in real flight con­di­tions. This is not yet final mis­sion accom­plished, but it is a piv­otal tech­ni­cal proof point on our path to two-way tran­si­tion.”

A sys­tem­at­ic approach towards two-way tran­si­tion

This achieve­ment builds on near­ly two years of pilot­ed flight test­ing under strict reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight. Dur­ing this time, the air­craft has demon­strat­ed all key phas­es of eVTOL flight, includ­ing hov­er, ver­ti­cal take-off, wing­borne flight, and ver­ti­cal land­ing. Addi­tion­al mile­stones include the first winged eVTOL flight in open Euro­pean air­space and an air­port-to-air­port flight at the Roy­al Inter­na­tion­al Air Tat­too.

Ver­ti­cal is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly expand­ing the tran­si­tion enve­lope from both ends — accel­er­at­ing from hov­er and decel­er­at­ing from wing­borne flight — with this lat­est flight com­plet­ing the for­mer.

Sup­port­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion

Each expan­sion of the flight enve­lope is con­duct­ed under a strict Per­mit to Fly regime and con­tributes direct­ly to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path for Valo, Vertical’s com­mer­cial air­craft. 

Every test flight is sup­port­ed by exten­sive struc­tur­al test­ing, sys­tems val­i­da­tion, sim­u­la­tor work, and the sub­mis­sion and review of detailed evi­dence to reg­u­la­tors before pro­gress­ing fur­ther.

Paul Stone, Test Pilot at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “This air­craft was made to tran­si­tion. From the moment the front pro­pellers tilt­ed and the air­craft began to accel­er­ate, the response was exact­ly as the sim­u­la­tion pre­dict­ed — smooth, sta­ble, and ful­ly under con­trol through­out.

“What the engi­neer­ing team has built here is gen­uine­ly extra­or­di­nary. The air­craft han­dled the tran­si­tion with a lev­el of con­fi­dence that gives me great opti­mism for every­thing that comes next.”