The New Spark in Aviation

By Joe Martin
Spring 2022

"Sophie, get me an air taxi to the Megabank Building on Central Avenue South." A familiar female voice responds, "Sure, let me see what’s available." Your Intelliphone screen pops up a satellite map image. A fluorescent green dot blinks over a building a few blocks away. "This one is available in about two minutes. Is that OK?" You reply in the affirmative. The voice quotes a price, which you accept. "Thank you. Your taxi is on the way, license is NV1435."

The green dot, now revolving like a tiny slow-motion pinwheel, heads toward the red circle marking your location. It stops momentarily, changes course slightly, then heads your way again. Not bad, you think to yourself. A lot of traffic today.

Three minutes 27 seconds after placing the call, the vehicle approaches the Vertiport, so quiet it cannot be heard over the street noise below. The rotors quickly wind down and the waiting area gate slides open. You walk over and strap in. This one holds three passengers, but you have it to yourself. The electric motors hum again, and you’re off to your cross-town appointment, ETA about 5 minutes from now - at least a half-hour sooner than you’d make it by the fastest ground transportation available.

Sci-Fi scenario, or soon to be reality?
In AAHS Flightline #202, we wondered what place space tourism may someday occupy in the history of human flight. Here, we look at some electrically powered aircraft designs. A few have already flown; some are awaiting takeoff. Others will likely remain digital dreams or non-flying mockups. Tough questions remain, but 2022 should provide answers.

The idea of electrically powered flying machines isn’t new. In 1884, the nonrigid airship La France, its massive propeller turned by a battery powered 8.5 hp electric motor, became the first aircraft of any kind to make a free flight and return to its starting point. The 23-minute flight covered about five miles. The airship managed to repeat the trick in five of its seven flights but as the internal combustion engine matured, electrical power was shelved. A century and a half later, is it poised to make a comeback as the prime mover in the drive towards Advanced Air Mobility?

Plenty of aspiring entrepreneurs think so. "There is no addressable market right now. We’re creating it," says Kyle Clark, founder and CEO of Beta Technologies, one of the leaders in the flock of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) startups. Directly or indirectly, several big names are also in the game, among them Airbus, Embraer, and United Airlines.

AAM and its virtually independent subset, Urban Air Mobility (UAM), are not precisely defined, but NASA describes AAM as an "air transportation system that moves people and rates companies on a scale of 0 to 10, expressed to one decimal place. Zero represents a company just considering the market. Ten would be "a company with a commercial product that is produced in thousands of units per year."

The AAM Reality Index may be aviation’s equivalent of the NFL’s passer rating algorithm, and just as apt to change game-to-game, but it’s an interesting look at the outfits that hope to make AAM a paying proposition. A couple dozen companies are currently ranked. A quarter of these are pursuing autonomous vehicles cargo between places previously not served or underserved by aviation – local, regional, intraregional, urban – using revolutionary new aircraft that are only just now becoming possible."

Ah, but how to determine exactly what is just now becoming possible? Players come and go, and flight and financial statuses change daily. The internet abounds with exquisitely done photographic renderings of AAM aircraft that exist only in cyberspace - some examples of which accompany this article. SMG Consulting, "a boutique management consulting firm" with offices in Arizona and California, has devised a tool to help sort through it all. The aptly named Advanced Air Mobility Reality Index, "based on a proprietary formula that uses publicly available information as well as expert knowledge." which, given the hurdles that must be surmounted in that arena, would seem to be at least a decade away from carrying passengers, although cargo-toting versions may be in the air sooner. There are no tens in the mix, obviously, and less than half have put a test vehicle, of subscale or tethered variety, into the air. Several of that select group only reached the first flight milestone in 2021, so it’s clearly a long road ahead.

Challenges - Technical and otherwise
The drawback today, just as it was in 1884, is the relatively puny amount of energy a battery can deliver per unit of weight. Top end battery-powered motor packs can deliver upwards of 500 hp, but only for 15 or 20 minutes. The battery/motor combination on La France weighed on the order of half a ton - about the same as the 6,000-cell lithium-ion battery pack in Rolls-Royce’s Spirit of Innovation which, although not included in the AAM Index, is certainly real.

In November 2021, Spirit (UK registration G-NXTE) clocked a record 345 mph over a 3-kilometer course, followed by an average 330 mph run over a 15 km course at the famed Boscombe Down aircraft testing facility. The maximum speed reached throughout all the trials was 387 mph. (As a point of reference, in April 1939 Messerschmitt test pilot Fritz Wendel gunned the Me-209 to a then world’s record 469 mph.)

Aside from significant battery technology challenges, there is the matter of airworthiness certification. Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) is a case in point. At least one electrically powered LSA type is in production and routinely flying today - but not in the US. Slovenia-based Pipistrel Aircraft’s Velis Electro was certified by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EUASA) in 2020, but FAA certification is still pending. Pipistrel got a major boost when Textron, parent company of Beech and Cessna, recently (March 2022) announced an agreement to purchase the company. The handful of Electros in the U.S. are essentially operating as demonstrators in the Experimental category. Even with type certification in place, LSA is not general aviation. The two-seat Electro is apt to be limited to a training role, and only in visual meteorological conditions (VMC).

In Canada, meanwhile, Harbour Air Seaplanes is not looking to set or break any speed records. Instead, the Vancouver, British Columbia, short haul/charter service intends to convert its fleet of DeHavilland DHC-2 floatplanes to Electric Propulsion Unit (EPU) systems manufactured by MagniX. A proof-of-concept example (C-FJOS) has been performing data-gathering flights since 2019. A second Beaver (C-FIFQ) is being readied as the certification validation aircraft for the series. Mating a certified MagniX EPU with a long-since-certified airframe such as the Beaver should make for a quicker Supplementary Type Certification (STC) issuance. A Cessna Grand Caravan 208B (N32EL) powered by a MagniX magni500 EPU has also been flown successfully, with STC expected in 2023.

Urban Air Mobility aircraft
Of the 13 AAM Reality Index entries that intend to launch 100% electrically powered, piloted aircraft, 11 are in the air taxi category portrayed in our hypothetical opening scene.

The current UAM contenders are electrical Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) types. These are not simply electrically powered helicopters. Some resemble the V-22 Osprey, while others use rotors for liftoff combined with horizontally aligned props for cruise.

In the UAM race, California based Joby Aviation, Inc., backed by deals with Toyota as well as NASA and the U.S. Air Force, holds the early lead (8.4 rating) as its model JAS4-2 demonstrator (N542AJ) continues flight testing after completing eleven laps (155 miles) around its Big Sur test facility in mid-2021. The 1 hour, 17 minutes flight was made on a single battery charge. However, on February 16, 2022, N542AJ, remotely piloted at the time, crashed at Joby’s test facility in Monterey County, California. Details are sketchy, but one report describes damage to the aircraft as "substantial." The NTSB is investigating.

Close behind Joby is Beta Technologies (7.8), with headquarters and factory at Burlington, Vermont, International Airport. CEO Kyle Clark’s philosophy is to keep things as simple as possible. "The number of requirements that you impose on an aircraft will define your path to certification," he says. Beta’s Alia design has "no articulating nacelles, no variable-pitch rotors, and no gearboxes": - reducing the number of things which must be accounted for in the certification process. As development continues, Alia has been flown in conventional mode for some time.

Beta is also deploying its "airport in a box" infrastructure. The modular "box," designed around standard shipping containers, contains an elevated landing platform, basic crew rest quarters, and a charging station. The production version of the Alia-250 aircraft will gross 7,000 lbs. and carry a pilot and fivepassengers or an equivalent weight of cargo 250 nm at 145 mph, and do it on a single charge. Recharge will take about an hour.

Archer Aviation (7.2 rating), another California based startup, has gone public by merging with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) - essentially an all or nothing bet by the SPAC investors that initial losses ($177 million in Q3/2021) will translate into future profits. United Airlines is among Archer’s backers hoping that the first flight of their Maker demonstrator (N301AX) in December 2021 does indeed herald big things to come. In the UK, Vertical Aerospace, Ltd., is betting on its four passenger VA-X4 air taxi, slated to fly in 2022. Several other AUM enterprises score in the seven range on the AAM Reality scale, and at least a couple of these should put prototypes in the air next year.

Advanced Air Mobility - The Regionals
Unlike the UAM types, which are mostly on-call VTOL vehicles intended to flit above city traffic, aircraft in the AAM category will be larger types capable of operating on regularly scheduled routes - the domain of the regional airline.

In this field, only Germany’s Lilium scores above 5.0 on the Reality scale. The company touts its six-passenger (plus pilot) eVTOL demonstrator, nicknamed Jet, as a pre-production example of the type that will start commercial operations in 2024. Jet relies on 36 ducted electric vectored thrust motors, which resemble miniature jet engines, thrust being generated by electrically driven fans and augmented by variable nozzles. The engines are integrated in the wing flaps that tilt downward for vertical takeoff then transition to normal position for cruise.

Conspicuously absent from the Reality Index is Eviation Aircraft, whose Alice prototype, first exhibited at the 2019 Paris Air Show, is certainly among the most aesthetically pleasing offerings in the AAM field. Figuratively at least, Alice got off to a flying start, but a fire in Eviation’s hanger at the Prescott, Ariz., Regional Airport in January 2020, coupled with other issues, essentially set the program back to square one. Operations have moved to Arlington, Washington. Alice, now with T-tail, repositioned motors, and tricycle gear, is essentially a redesigned aircraft. In mid-February, Eviation founder and CEO Omer Bar-Yohay unexpectedly stepped down, just a little over a month after Eviation’s chairman, Roei Ganzarski, who also headed MagniX, left the company.

Likewise, work on NASA’s X-57 progresses at a pre-climate-change glacial pace. Named after James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish physicist who first advanced the theory of electromagnetism, the X-57 is a modified Italian Tecnam P2006T four-seat twin. NASA is in the midst of a four-stage modification process on the vehicle, starting with systems ground tests and replacement of the avgas-powered engines with electric motors. Subsequent mods will move the motors to the tips of a new, higher aspect ratio wing, and place pods under the leading edge, simulating smaller electric motors in those positions. In the X-57’s final Mod 4 form, prop wash from these 12 small motors will "blow" over the airfoil, increasing lift at STOL airspeeds. At cruising speed, the small propellors will fold backwards to reduce drag.

Back to the future?
Among the more interesting AAM deals announced in the past year is Mesa Air Group’s option to purchase 100 ES-19 all-electric commuter aircraft from Sweden’s Heart Aerospace. Operating as American Eagle and United Express, Mesa is a regional partner of those mainline carriers. As a 2021 digital article in simpleflying.com notes, while flying has now become routine for almost all Americans, service to more isolated rural areas has in fact regressed. As one example, Farmington, New Mexico’s Four Corners Regional Airport once boasted 30 daily departures to seven destinations. Today, Farmington has no scheduled passenger service. Operating costs of the ubiquitous 50-seat RJs have made locations like Farmington unprofitable, even with Essential Air Service (ESA) subsidies from the Federal government.

Although it now operates those very Bombardier and Embraer regional jets exclusively, Mesa has a long history of passenger operations with smaller aircraft in out-of-the way markets. Mesa CEO Jonathan Ornstein elaborates: "Mesa operated over 200 19-seat airplanes at one point, and now there are, literally, no 19-seat aircraft being operated in the United States when there was once, literally, in the thousands." Harking back to his days at now-defunct Air LA, Ornstein sees the ES-19, so named because of its number of seats, as the low-cost solution to reopening those unserved markets.

The ES-19 is scheduled to become operational in 2026, but to this point only a 1/5th scale demonstrator has actually flown. In any case, one nagging question remains. Even if the ES-19 and similar types are FAA certified, will the convenience of closer and more frequent air service be sufficient to overcome the flying public’s general aversion to propeller-driven aircraft?

The bottom line
As the old joke has it, the way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a large one. At least some of the names on the AAM Reality Index, backed by Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, seem to be in that position. Joby Aviation reportedly can tap a cash reserve of nearly $2B. Lilium rings in at $930M, with Archer not far behind. Beta Technologies, which appears to have as good a chance as any at early FAA certification, comes in at $500M. All are presently operating at tremendous losses, and while options and tentative agreements amounting to billions of dollars are on record, no money has yet changed hands. AAM wannabe Zunum went bust back in 2019. Others may be on life support.

Four of the companies briefly examined in this article - Joby, Archer, Lilium, and Vertical Aerospace - are traded on the NY Stock exchange or NASDAQ. The stock market may or may not be a sound indicator of public confidence or of things to come, but as 2022 began all four offerings were trading in the $6 to $8 range, around 20 to 40 percent lower than where their values stood in early 2020.

Graham Warwick, Technology Editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology, may have summed it all up as well as anyone can:

"Which is the winning business model in advanced air mobility? Urban or regional; passenger or cargo; piloted or autonomous; vertical, short, or conventional takeoff and landing? All of them or none? It is a question that cannot yet be answered. There are players pursing all of these ideas, individually or in combination, and they all want a piece of a market that is projected to be worth trillions of dollars but which in reality does not yet exist." (Quote from AW&ST, 13-26 Sept 2021)