BETA Technologies had a busy pavilion at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) this year. I last wrote about them in 2023: A visit to BETA Technologies in Burlington, Vermont (eVTOL aircraft).
The company’s “CTOL” aircraft was on display in a spacious six-seat configuration. It can supposedly travel 150 nm with a reasonable reserve (215 nm absolute range) with all six seats occupied. An efficient cruise speed is a Robinson R44-style 105 knots. Against a typical headwind maybe the range is more like 130 nm. Make sure not to run out of battery power because the stall speed is 80 knots, which would mean hitting the ground at over 100 mph.
BETA plans to certify the aircraft under FAR 23, which limits single-engine aircraft to a stall speed of 61 knots unless the manufacturer can demonstrate above-and-beyond crashworthiness. This has been stretched to 67 knots by a couple of companies, e.g., Cirrus for the Vision Jet and Pilatus for the PC-12, but nobody has ever gone anywhere near 80 knots. If the BETA has only one propeller how can it get FAR 23 certification? Maybe the answer is that the single propeller/motor combination has two independent motors internally? Thus, the aircraft could actually be considered a centerline twin?
The actual plane at the event has accumulated 250 hours. The pilots who’ve flown it say that it is quiet enough that they remove their headsets when in cruise (electric engine in the back). An air conditioner is coming soon. Finally we might have an aircraft as comfortable as a Honda Odyssey?
(The tail number is N916LF in memory of Lochie Ferrier, a young MIT graduate and former BETA employee who died in a homebuilt aircraft accident in January 2024. We don’t yet have a final NTSB report, but there appears to have been a power loss in a piston engine that may have been unrelated to the aircraft’s experimental status. 9/16 was Lochie’s birthday.)
The vehicle is huge. If a conventional airframe company built this it would have to sell for $3 million just to pay for the aluminum and carbon fiber construction.
How are the legacy piston-powered companies responding to this innovation? A new paint scheme at the Cirrus pavilion:
Guess the electric sector came to its senses & quietly stepped away from the VTOL concepts of 4 years ago. They kept the exact same goofy wing from the VTOL to save on manufacturing costs. Good move to not to photograph the wing.