Electra completes test flights from heliport
Electra’s EL2 Ultra Short technology demonstrator departs from a heliport adapted for the aircraft at Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport.
Electra has completed “first-of-its-kind” flights from a heliport on a commercial airport ramp at the Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport in southwestern Virginia, US.
The operations showcased the capabilities of Electra’s fixed-wing ultra short take off and landing-capable aircraft to use vertical flight landing areas and helicopter-style instrument procedures. Electra said this shows its ability to not add to congested runways at commercial airports.
“What happened in Virginia provides a glimpse into the future of flight,” said Marc Allen, CEO of Electra. “We showed that fixed-wing, ultra short aircraft can use vertical flight landing areas and a new generation of instrument procedures to reach places conventional airplanes were never designed to access. This will both bring air service closer to the passenger and also expand capacity at commercial airports in completely non-congestive ways.”
Using Electra’s hybrid-electric EL2 aircraft, the flights tested point-in-space procedures and dedicated instrument routings across numerous Virginia airports, including Virginia Tech/Montgomery Regional Airport in Blacksburg, Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport and Allan C Perkinson/Blackstone AAF Airport.
The flights at each of these locations, plus two additional sites in Newport News and Richmond, all took off and landed on small heliports, vertiports, taxiways and other “novel ultra short access points” historically only accessible by helicopters.
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The work was conducted in coordination with the FAA eVTOL and AAM Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), the Virginia Smart Airspace Program, Virginia Tech, the Virginia Department of Aviation and PennDOT, the lead eIPP participant for Virginia operations.
Tombo Jones, director of Virginia Tech’s Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership said: “This is the kind of practical flight testing needed to move Advanced Air Mobility from concept to operational reality. The goal is not just to fly a route, but to generate the data and operational insight needed to help new aircraft types integrate safely, efficiently, and repeatably into the airspace system.”
During flights, operational data was collected to compare aircraft performance against procedure requirements and inform future evaluation of fixed-wing AAM operations using helicopter-style instrument procedures.
Through over a year of programme development leading up to this month’s testing, Smart Airspace partners and the FAA designed flexible vertiport and heliport approaches to accommodate the novel approach and departure instrument procedures for the aircraft, and workshopped new air traffic concepts to allow it to land off-runway at airports.
Dr Parker Vascik, director of Product Strategy at Electra said: “This is a breakthrough moment for Advanced Air Mobility. All in all, we demonstrated the core enabling principle of Ultra Short aircraft feeding into major airports in a manner that complements rather than burdens the air traffic system—by accessing airspace and airport surfaces currently underutilized by conventional traffic. This is a first step toward developing guidelines and procedures for Ultra Short operations at major airports and novel access points.”