Austin, Texas-based LIFT Aircraft has continued working with the US Air Force’s Agility Prime program. On March 23–24, the Air Force moved one of the company’s HEXA single-seat eVTOL ultralights on an HC-130J transport aircraft from Springfield, Ohio (where it had been testing near the Air Force’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) to LIFT’s hometown of Austin, Texas.
Embraer’s eVTOL subsidiary, Eve Urban Air Mobility Solutions, Inc., posted a video on its YouTube channel on March 17 that gave a number of insights into its developments.
In March, the eVTOL.com website broke the news that Bruchsal, Germany-based Volocopter GmbH had submitted a patent application in May 2020 for a tandem-winged multicopter.
After many months of rumors and speculation, Guangzhou, China-based EHang acknowledged in a tweet on March 9, “EHang has been developing long-range electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle for years.
On Feb. 24, emergency response and healthcare company Falck announced a collaboration with Kitty Hawk to consider its high-performance, single-seat Heaviside eVTOL for emergency response operations.
Numerous electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) designs rely on hybrid electric propulsion to offset the limited power density of current battery technology (see “Halfway to Paradise?” Vertiflite, Sept/Oct 2020).
On April 7, United Parcel Service (UPS) announced that its UPS Flight Forward subsidiary plans to purchase and operate cargo aircraft from Burlington, Vermont-based Beta Technologies.
Much has been written about the plans and development progress for Ingenuity; see "Red Planet Rotorcraft," Vertiflite, July/August 2018 and "NASA Mars Helicopter Team Striving for a 'Kitty Hawk' Moment," Vertiflite, May/June 2020.
April 19, 2021 — a day for the record books: the successful first flight of an aircraft on another planet. Lifting off from the surface of Mars to a modest 10 ft (3 m), NASA’s diminutive Ingenuity helicopter made a humble start that holds huge significance for future flights.
Making lightweight, crashworthy aerostructures affordable is essential for advanced air mobility (AAM), given the huge number of aircraft needed to unclog roads.
