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Last month, Electra demonstrated that its fixed-wing EL2 prototype can fly the types of instrument procedures typically limited to helicopters when it tested specially developed routes and approaches across multiple airports in Virginia.
Conducted under Virginia’s Smart Airspace program and the Federal Aviation Administration’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), the flight campaign further validated the capabilities of Electra’s ultra-short take-off and landing design. But it was also significant for the broader advanced air mobility (AAM) industry as part of an ongoing effort to show how instrument procedures can be adapted for novel aircraft and operational concepts.
“There’s a lot of tweaks we can make here and there in a procedure to make it more optimized for the performance of [AAM] aircraft,” said Tombo Jones, director of Virginia Tech’s Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP), which is leading the Smart Airspace program.
Ultimately, he told The Air Current, that could make instrument flight more viable and appealing for a wide variety of electric and hybrid-electric aircraft — unlocking the kind of safety and operational predictability that could help the industry scale.
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