BETA begins production aircraft flight test campaign

Vermont-based BETA Technologies has achieved a milestone by completing the maiden flight of its first electric aircraft produced on its rate production line.

The ALIA CTOL aircraft was assembled at BETA’s 200,000 sq ft South Burlington facility, receiving FAA certification for experimental operations.

Founder and CEO Kyle Clark piloted the inaugural flight, which tested the aircraft’s handling and systems.

“This start of our production CX300 flight test campaign is a result of years of hard work and focus on studying customer requirements, hard engineering, manufacturing, production, quality and test,” he said.

“It represents a significant milestone for BETA, and is the beginning of an exciting new phase for the business. With this, we’re one step closer to putting this technology into the hands of our customers.

“We learned a lot from this first production build. We weren’t just building an aircraft company, we were building and refining a system to build high quality aircraft efficiently.

“This first build allowed the team to collect data and insight on manufacturing labor, tooling design, processes, yields and sequences, all of which are being used to refine our production systems.”

It comes a year after BETA began production and follows a $318 million Series C funding round aimed at accelerating certification and production of ALIA CTOL and VTOL models.