Wisk Completes First Flight of Gen 6 Aircraft, Latest Milestone in Journey to Deliver First Autonomous eVTOL to US Market

Wisk has com­plet­ed the first flight of its Gen­er­a­tion 6 air­craft, rep­re­sent­ing a piv­otal step for­ward in the com­pa­ny’s jour­ney to deliv­er the first cer­ti­fied, autonomous pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing eVTOL air­craft in the USA.

The air­craft per­formed its ini­tial ver­ti­cal take­off, hov­er, and sta­bi­lized flight maneu­vers at Wisk’s flight test facil­i­ty in Hol­lis­ter, Cal­i­for­nia. As part of a press release issued yes­ter­day (Tues­day), Wisk says this val­i­dates the aircraft’s core flight sys­tems and is a crit­i­cal first step in an exten­sive test­ing cam­paign.

Wisk is the only com­pa­ny to have designed, built, and flown six gen­er­a­tions of eVTOL air­craft and the Gen­er­a­tion 6 air­craft is the sub­ject of com­pa­ny’s type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion appli­ca­tion and ongo­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion project. 

Sebastien Vigneron, Wisk CEO, said: “This first flight is the moment our team has been work­ing toward, and it is a pow­er­ful demon­stra­tion of the work, exper­tise, and com­mit­ment that have gone into the Gen 6 pro­gram.

“See­ing Gen 6 take flight is an excit­ing moment for Wisk and the future of avi­a­tion. It reaf­firms our belief in auton­o­my, and we are even more ener­gized to con­tin­ue the jour­ney to bring safe, every­day flight to every­one.”

Lever­ag­ing learn­ings from Wisk’s pre­vi­ous five gen­er­a­tions of air­craft and more than 1,750 test flights, Gen 6 is the first-ever can­di­date for an FAA-cer­ti­fied com­mer­cial autonomous pas­sen­ger air­craft in the USA, with launch mar­kets includ­ing Hous­ton, Los Ange­les and Mia­mi.

Wisk air­craft are all-elec­tric and autonomous, with ded­i­cat­ed human over­sight from a ground-based Mul­ti-Vehi­cle Supervisor—a pio­neer­ing mod­el Wisk believes is key to achiev­ing high lev­els of safe­ty, scal­a­bil­i­ty, and afford­abil­i­ty. Wisk has an active cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram with the FAA and is design­ing its air­craft to meet or exceed today’s rig­or­ous com­mer­cial avi­a­tion safe­ty stan­dards.

Bri­an Yutko, VP of Prod­uct Devel­op­ment at Boe­ing Com­mer­cial Air­planes and Chair­man of the Board at Wisk, said: “We are excit­ed to see Wisk achieve this mile­stone, and I’m so proud of the team that made it pos­si­ble. The team at Wisk has built advanced tech­nolo­gies across flight con­trols, sens­ing, nav­i­ga­tion, mis­sion man­age­ment, elec­tric pow­er, sys­tems inte­gra­tion, and many oth­ers for a prod­uct that is designed to meet a rig­or­ous safe­ty case for a focused con­cept of oper­a­tions.

“The engi­neer­ing meth­ods and tech­nolo­gies are all a valu­able source of insight for Boe­ing as we work togeth­er and thought­ful­ly apply them to the future of flight.”

With the suc­cess­ful first hov­er flight com­plet­ed, Wisk is now exe­cut­ing a rig­or­ous flight test pro­gram focused on safe­ly val­i­dat­ing the Gen 6 design, sim­u­la­tion mod­els and sys­tem per­for­mance.

The ini­tial phase of test­ing will focus on build­ing out the hov­er regime, con­cen­trat­ing on take­offs, land­ings, and low-speed sta­bil­i­ty before expand­ing to high­er speeds and alti­tudes, includ­ing com­plex maneu­vers such as lon­gi­tu­di­nal tran­si­tion, lat­er­al tran­si­tion, and ped­al turns. Each test pro­vides cru­cial data to ver­i­fy our con­trol laws, struc­tur­al loads, and air­craft dynam­ics, allow­ing for refine­ment as need­ed. 

In par­al­lel, Wisk con­tin­ues to mature its auton­o­my tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing detect-and-avoid and nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems, and is col­lab­o­rat­ing close­ly with the FAA, NASA, Sky­Grid, and oth­ers to build a more effi­cient air­space.