MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
From Aviation Week:
"While publicly traded electric aircraft startups trumpet every financial and technical milestone to reassure shareholders, Beta Technologies has made substantial progress within the relative sanctuary of private ownership.
Two piloted, full-scale demonstrators have logged more than 500 flights, with both conventional and vertical takeoffs and landings. Hundreds of electric motors have completed more than 10,000 hr. of ground testing. And on Oct. 2, Beta opened its manufacturing facility at Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport in Vermont.
- The manufacturing facility can produce 300 aircraft a year
- A type-design motor is flying on demonstrators
- Production-intent battery systems are taking shape
A visit by Aviation Week to Burlington in August underlined Beta's quiet progress, from the aircraft on routine test flights, motors undergoing endurance runs and battery packs being built to the wing-assembly fixture already in position in the nearly complete manufacturing facility.
This is not a pilot production facility like those where Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation are assembling their first aircraft. The first prototypes of Beta's electric aircraft will be manufactured on the same tooling and in the same building where certified production aircraft are scheduled to begin rolling off the line in 2025.
Those first aircraft will be the CX300 electric conventional-takeoff-and-landing (eCTOL) version of Beta's Alia design. The startup decided in 2022 that customer demand for an electric aircraft justified moving ahead first with a fixed-wing version that would be easier to certify. FAA certification is targeted for 2025.
CX300 deliveries to customers such as Bristow Group and United Therapeutics will bring in revenue while Beta continues development of the A250 electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) version of the Alia, planned for certification in 2026. Both versions are 80% common and will be built on the same tooling.
