With a 50-foot wingspan and a five-blade fixed pitch propeller, this is a five-passenger electric airplane that takes off, flies and lands much like a smaller, traditional aircraft, such as perhaps a Cessna. But electric planes boast lower noise and lower per-hour energy costs.
The plane is expected to be ready for Sinclair in June.
But Sinclair owns the mobile flight simulator — and a Sinclair workshop in Springfield Thursday served as an introduction to the new plane via the simulator, found near the National Advanced Air Mobility Center of Excellence at the Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport.
The workshop offers pilots and industry veterans a chance to familiarize themselves with the Beta craft in a trio of eight-hour ground schools — at a cost of $2,000 for each course.
Two of the courses involve time in the mobile simulator trailer and must be taken in person. An introductory course may be taken remotely.
“It’s an experiential way, a way to kind of quickly work through the concepts of operations and understand the differences of the type of aircraft in a way you just can’t do in a ground lecture only,” said Andrew Shepherd, Sinclair’s chief research officer.
“It’s a very intuitive aircraft to fly,” he added, seeking to reassure a visitor unsure about trying the simulator. “They put a lot of effort into the human factors design.”
The simulator has been in Springfield since last summer.
On hand Thursday were experts such as Gerardo Olivares, director at Wichita State’s National Institute for Aviation Research, and Tyler Seeholzer, Beta’s training lead.
Olivares was using the simulator Thursday.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to fly the vehicle,” he said. “Everything is very intuitive and user-friendly. Once we get the instruction from the instructors, it’s fairly easy to fly.”
At the heart of “advanced air mobility” is simply applying novel technologies to aircraft design, Seeholzer said. Electrification allows for a quieter, lighter plane that costs less to operate.
“Electrification allows us to put more engines on (the plane) than we could with combustion (propulsion),” he said. “And simultaneously reduce the cost of operation.”
Flying an Osprey-type aircraft or a military vertical take-off and landing craft might cost perhaps $6,000 a flight hour to operate, Seeholzer said.
“Electrifying it makes it $600 a flight hour,” he added. “Which is a 10X reduction in the cost.”
“We believe our ALIA CTOL electric aircraft is at the forefront of the electric aviation industry,” the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission S-1 filing last October. “The ALIA CTOL has successfully flown thousands of flights, nearly 83,000 nautical miles, including operations in North America and Europe. This includes the world’s first,all-electric passenger flights into John F. Kennedy International Airport.”
Beta is one of the chief competitors of Joby Aviation, which has launched Dayton manufacturing operations for its electric aircraft.
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