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An electric aircraft that takes off like a helicopter and cruises like a conventional plane just completed its first piloted flight with a new full-scale prototype. British company Vertical Aerospace is accelerating toward commercial certification, targeted for 2028.
On June 5, 2026, at 8:49 AM local time, test pilot Paul Stone lifted off at the controls of Vertical Aerospace‘s latest full-scale prototype from the company’s Flight Test Centre in the UK. It is the second such aircraft the company now has in the air – doubling its flight-testing capacity.
The flight followed the Civil Aviation Authority’s issuance of a Permit to Fly – a formal regulatory instrument granted after extensive ground testing. “Getting our latest prototype into flight testing is an important milestone because it allows us to learn faster in real-world conditions and keep building momentum towards certification,” said CEO Stuart Simpson.
Both aircraft are full-scale prototypes of the Valo, Vertical Aerospace’s flagship eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) design, and they are now operating in parallel. The earlier prototype has already completed all flight test phases – thrustborne flight (where the aircraft is held up purely by rotor thrust, like a helicopter), wingborne flight (where the wings generate lift, like a conventional plane), and the full bidirectional transition between both modes – and continues flying to gather additional data. The newcomer starts its own cycle from scratch, working through each of those same phases in sequence.
Once the new prototype completes those phases in electric configuration, Vertical Aerospace plans to convert it into a testbed for a hybrid-electric variant – a future development aimed at applications requiring greater range and payload for sectors like defense, logistics, or extended commercial transport.
This prototype is also the last before the Critical Design Review (CDR), the program milestone that locks in the baseline design for certification. Once that hurdle is cleared, Vertical Aerospace will begin assembling its first pre-production aircraft.
