Watch Video: “Vertical Aerospace Continues on its Skyward March After Completing Successful Wing Borne Flights” 

After a dif­fi­cult start to its eVTOL jour­ney, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and its VX4 air­craft is on a steady sky­ward march towards Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2028.

It may not look the pret­ti­est of air­craft, but like all true British under­dogs, there is a qui­et deter­mi­na­tion, resilience and up against the wall for­ti­tude towards meet­ing this end goal bar­ring, of course, that con­stant and at times fraught need to attract mon­ey, and yet more huge amounts of mon­ey, to its cof­fers. For this indus­try is one gar­gan­tu­an mon­ey pit.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the eVTOL com­pa­ny does not enjoy the lux­u­ry of a glob­al car man­u­fac­tur­er pres­ence and the finan­cial safe­ty net this offers, like its pri­ma­ry com­peti­tors.

So, with a cer­tain Eng­lish pride, let the flags now fly in the sky for this Bris­tol-based com­pa­ny. It deserves all the acco­lades going, when the rest of Europe has lost inter­est in the elec­tric air taxi indus­try and passed on the baton instead to the U.S and Chi­na to keep the dream of a future green avi­a­tion alive.

News broke this week, accom­pa­nied by a rous­ing video, that Ver­ti­cal had suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed phase 3 of its VX4 pilot­ed wing borne flight tri­als. The air­craft has now tak­en off, flown and land­ed like a con­ven­tion­al air­craft with lift gen­er­at­ed by its wings. Its stock price soared by close to nine per­cent on the news (Sep­tem­ber 10th).

Please Watch Video

The release explains, “The wing borne phase includ­ed flights by Chief Test Pilot Simon Davies and Test Pilot Paul Stone, switch­ing between direct (man­u­al) and flight (com­put­er-assist­ed) con­trol modes. The VX4 per­formed as mod­elled in the sim­u­la­tor, val­i­dat­ing both the design and ease of han­dling.”

Since com­plet­ing Europe’s first-ever pilot­ed wing borne flight of a winged eVTOL in May 2025, Ver­ti­cal has:-

: Com­plet­ed pilot­ed flight tests cov­er­ing 250 miles.

: Reached a top speed of 120 knots and alti­tude of 2,000 ft.

: Col­lect­ed over 22 bil­lion data points, val­i­dat­ing aero­dy­nam­ic mod­els, acoustic lev­els, sys­tem reli­a­bil­i­ty and per­for­mance.

Ver­ti­cal will now move to its final tri­al stage: Tran­si­tion, prov­ing the VX4’s abil­i­ty to shift seam­less­ly between ver­ti­cal lift (heli­copter mode) and wing borne flight (air­plane mode).

Some sug­gest this can be one of the more dif­fi­cult and trick­i­est phas­es of an eVTOL aircraft’s growth, but no doubt the plucky VX4 will pass the test with fly­ing colours.

VX4 Fly­ing over the Cotswolds

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, com­ment­ed, “Com­plet­ing wing borne flight is a his­toric mile­stone for us. Each phase strength­ens con­fi­dence among reg­u­la­tors, part­ners and investors that our air­craft will meet the high­est stan­dards of safe­ty and per­for­mance. Now we enter the most excit­ing stage: tran­si­tion test­ing, demon­strat­ing the mode the VX4 will use in pas­sen­ger ser­vice.”

Simon Davies, the Chief Test Pilot, added, “Paul Stone and I have had the priv­i­lege of fly­ing this machine through it’s wing borne test phase. It’s been incred­i­bly reward­ing, with the air­craft per­form­ing just like the sim­u­la­tor dur­ing our first flights in open air space.”

He con­tin­ued, “With the high-qual­i­ty data we’ve gath­ered and the abil­i­ty to test at both high and low speeds, we are in the best pos­si­ble place to explore tran­si­tion with our proven tools and flight test team.”

More details of the VX4 progress will be shared at Vertical’s ‘Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Day’ in New York on Sep­tem­ber 17th.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://vertical-aerospace.com/

(Top image: Ver­ti­cal Aero­space VX4 dur­ing wing borne flight tri­al)

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