What an interesting week in eIPP news!
Ampaire flew the electric eel across Utah.
Utah is of course, an eIPP state, and named Ampaire as a partner in its press release back in March. I have not seen a press release this week from US (or Utah) DOT, FAA, or Ampaire saying that they have formally started the eIPP program activity, so I am guessing this is a practice run of some kind. So, file under “eIPP foreshadowing”.
While they were at it, Ampaire racked up an 1,112 km flight from Long Beach to Cedar City, which is the longest Ampaire flight (and likely one of the longest electric flights) that we have on record1, eIPP or not. This converted Cessna Skymaster 337 has an electric engine in the front, and a STC Continental IO-550 in the rear, making it an independent hybrid.
Industry sources named BETA as the first eIPP flight this week.
BETA did a fairly remarkable thing this week, carrying medical cargo through eIPP states for United Therapeutics. This flight was to test the transport of United Therapeutics’ manufactured organs.
BETA’s N336MR flew first from Virginia Tech Montgomery Executive Airport in Blacksburg Virginia to Charlottesville Albemarle Airport, a 210 km leg flown in 54 minutes. Ceiling was at 200 feet, with visibility at 1.75 statute miles, so this leg was starting out in LIFR.
The next flight is the veteran N916LF, which takes off from Charlottesville, lands briefly in Frederick Maryland, then finally lands at Martin State airport in Baltimore.
There is a charge cube at Frederick, so its possible that they stopped to charge. They were on the tarmac for only 28 minutes, but the charger on site is a 320 kW fast charger, so even if they only plugged in for fifteen minutes they could have added 25% or so back in to the battery pack.
Aerospace America’s Paul Brinkmann reports that members of the 15 state collaborative led by Pennsylvania and including Virginia and Maryland, signed an agreement Thursday “with the DOT2” detailing the organ transplant flights, and the first flight occurred on Friday, quoting BETA’s head of government affairs, Kristen Costello.
BETA’s LinkedIn account shared that “BETA became the first aircraft manufacturer to conduct operational flights as part of the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) on Friday.” I haven’t yet seen a press release from the FAA, any of the states involved, or the DOT. This is, at a minimum, some serious foreshadowing of the eIPP, and potentially is the beginning of the actual program.
Well, on to the EVTOL Weekly! As usual, we cover Archer, BETA, Joby and Vertical Aerospace. We start with analysis, then flight logs and fleet report, then the low precision report.
Analysis
↘️ Archer
Archer is down in flight count, time in the air and distance this week.
↗️ BETA
BETA is definitely demonstrating the power of having multiple aircraft to operate, and racking up 9,637 kilometres of flight this week. The only thing down is VTOL, we did not see the A250 take to the sky this week, ending a 7 week run.
➡️ Joby
Joby is up in terms of flight time, but down in distance and flight count. We’ll include the certification report in the flight logs as usual.
↘️ Vertical Aerospace
Vertical is down, and appears to have disabled ADSB-out and even Mode S again. It was fun while it lasted!
Flight Logs
Archer (CTOL)
2 flights (-4 over last week)
34 minutes of flight time (-1 hour 1 minute over last week)
83 km (-158 km over last week)
Location breakdown:
34 minutes at Salinas
