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There are plenty of companies in this world working on vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, but only one of them seems to be making headway over in Europe: Vertical Aerospace. And the company just announced it reached a significant milestone in the development of its aircraft, the VX4.
The flying machine has been in the works for several years now, but the pace of development has picked up significantly in recent months. With incredible speed, Vertical has moved from ground tests to actual flight, and most recently managed to perform the first-ever flight of its prototype with lift generated by the wings of the VX4. It’s also Europe’s first such achievement in open airspace.
The company calls this approach wingborne flight, and it essentially means the VTOL, with a pilot on board, managed to take off, fly, and then land, all in the same fashion a conventional aircraft would. It also means it didn’t rely solely on the rotor to keep in the air.
The achievement was announced this week and it took place at a private airport in the UK called Cotswold. We’re not told the specifics of the flight (things like speed, altitude, and flight duration), but Vertical says the VX4 prototype used in the test performed exactly as expected, and the flight allowed it to measure some 30,000 in-flight parameters.
After all this data is looked over, Vertical will eventually go for a full piloted transition flight, which means the VX4 will have to take off vertically, switch to horizontal flight in the air, and then come back down to the runway, either in conventional aircraft fashion or vertically. This test should occur by the end of the year.
Until that time, though, more wingborne test will likely be conducted, as the company plans to take the VX4 to top speeds of 150 mph (241 kph) and to altitudes of 2,000 feet (610 meters).
The Vertical VX4 should be ready to fly operationally sometime in 2028. It will be capable of carrying one pilot and four passengers to distances of up to 100 miles (161 km) on a single charge of its batteries, and at speeds that could reach as much as 150 mph (241 kph).
Vertical is building the VX4 with help from a series of partners, including GKN Aerospace, Honeywell and Leonardo. There seems to be great interest in the aircraft, as we’re told some 1,500 pre-orders have been placed for it, including from industry giants American Airlines and Japan Airlines.
Earlier in May Vertical also announced it is working on a much more capable variant of the VX4, one that could fly much further, 1,000 miles (1,609 km), dwarfing everything that exists in the VTOL industry.
