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Hyderabad-based aerospace company BluJ Aerospace has unveiled the Gen #2 prototype, the first aircraft developed on its VANTIS platform-based architecture after four years of in-house research and development. The company said Gen #2 is the first commercial-grade aircraft from the platform and is currently undergoing active flight testing for heavy-payload logistics operations.
The unveiling follows Gen #1, BluJ’s technology demonstrator and India’s first public flight demonstration of a 500 kg-class eVTOL aircraft. According to the company, Gen #2 marks the shift from a technology demonstrator to an operational aircraft and is being used for early customer pilots, payload testing and logistics mission evaluations.
Gen #2 has been designed for heavy-payload logistics, with an active payload target of over 200 kg and a maximum take-off weight of 500 kg. The fully battery-powered aircraft uses a lift-plus-cruise configuration and has been developed with major subsystems aligned to the standards required for the certified commercial version of REACH.
BluJ said Gen #2 is part of a broader roadmap under VANTIS, a shared technology platform intended to support multiple VTOL aircraft variants across urban and regional transportation, with passenger mobility as a long-term goal. The platform covers the airframe, propulsion, controls and autonomy systems, allowing new aircraft to use already-tested subsystems to reduce development time and costs.
The company added that VANTIS has been designed to scale into larger VTOL aircraft, including one-ton payload models for heavy logistics and hydrogen-electric long-range passenger variants.
“The next major shift in aviation is the move from single product programmes to platform-based architectures. Just as the automotive industry builds multiple vehicles on a common platform, Advanced Air Mobility will need adaptable architectures that scale across missions, payloads and customer use cases,” said Amar Sri Vatsavaya, Founder and CEO of BluJ Aerospace. “Our platform-based approach lets us develop multiple AAM product classes efficiently and at scale.”
