On Tuesday, Textron eAviation announced it will loan a Pipistrel Velis Electro to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where it will be showcased for the next three years. Textron acquired Pipistrel and the Velis for $235 million in 2022.

“This contribution represents a major milestone in actively promoting sustainable aviation technology to educate the next generation of aviators, while also strengthening our position as leaders in reducing the industry’s impact on the environment,” said Kriya Shortt, president and CEO of Textron eAviation.

The Velis Electro, winner of the 2021 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aircraft Design Award, will be a unique addition for the museum, which largely features aircraft that no longer fly.

It received European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) type certification in 2020, becoming the first electric aircraft in the world to reach the milestone. In March, it earned a light sport aircraft (LSA) exemption from the FAA, opening up flight training using electric aircraft in the U.S.

In 2021, flight school Florida Tech became the first in the country to own and fly (in the experimental category) an electric aircraft when it purchased the Velis. The following year, a student pilot flying the model became the first in the U.S. to earn a pilot private certificate in an electric airplane.

Even the U.S. military is interested in the aircraft—last year, AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Air Force, picked the Velis for its Agility Prime aircraft development and flight test program. The initiative seeks to uncover military applications for commercial designs that have yet to hit the market.

Soon, members of the public will have the opportunity to see the Velis Electro up close and personal at the National Air and Space Museum’s upcoming exhibition next year.

“As we endeavor to tell stories about innovations occurring right now in aerospace, Textron eAviation’s loan of a Pipistrel Velis Electro allows us to explore the topic of sustainability efforts in aviation,” said Roger Connor, a curator at the museum.

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“We have a little different expectation of what the aircraft will be capable of at [type certification],” said Rob Scholl, in an exclusive interview with FLYING. Scholl is CEO of Textron eAviation, under which the Pipistrel business unit resides. “The biggest change to the plan is that we want the airplane to be night IFR capable at entry into service. We also think we have the opportunity to bring the G1000 NXi avionics platform to the airplane.”

“There’s just some flight test that needs to be done to wrap up the program,” Scholl continued. “About a two-year timeframe is reasonable to get that through EASA, and then hopefully over through the FAA through the bilateral agreements.”

“The Panthera is going to be a game changer for the light aircraft segment,” said Gabriel Massey, president and managing director at Pipistrel, in a statement. “With capacity for up to four people, a range of 1,100 miles and a cruising speed of 230 miles per hour, this is a high-performance aircraft that will enable traveling at longer distances in great comfort. The Panthera is the ultimate answer for those looking for speed, fuel efficiency, and IFR capability.”

Flying Now—Under Experimental Regs

About a dozen of the Pantheras are already flying in the U.S. under the experimental exhibition category, as Scholl confirmed. The company benefits from real-world feedback from those aircraft in service—though they run the risk of being somewhat orphaned following the changes needed to make TC. However, Scholl doesn’t foresee much of a hurdle here. “The nice thing is, I don’t think there are large-scale requirements to the airplane right now, so those airplanes that are out there, we’ll continue to support them.”

“When [Pipistrel U.S. distributors Andy Chan and Shavonna Reid] mention something to us, we listen to them about the Panthera,” said Scholl, as the pair have been flying the model extensively over the past couple of years from their base at Right Rudder Aviation in Inverness, Florida (KINF).

Powerplant for Initial TC?

The Panthera has been under development with the intent that it could accept a selection of powerplants up front, depending on where the airplane would operate—and the needs of the customer. In fact, last September, Pipistrel flew a hybrid-electric version of the Panthera in Slovenia as a demonstration of the concept. “Good feedback from that—I think it performed well,” said Scholl. “We will continue the development of that platform. I just don’t think we’re ready yet to put a timeline on when that would be available on the marketplace.”

“It could obviously add a sustainability benefit to [the Panthera] and hopefully that will be something that the market will be looking for.”

But Textron eAviation will focus on the engine currently installed in aircraft flying in the U.S.—the Lycoming IO-540V-V4A5—for the initial type certification. “That’s obviously what’s in the aircraft now—for speed, we’re going to focus on that,” said Scholl. 

The Lycoming powerplant also looks like it will be a good match for whatever unleaded fuels come out of the EAGLE (Eliminate Aviation Gas Lead Emission) initiative. “I know Lycoming—they’re part of Textron—they’re looking at those initiatives as well,” he said. “We plan on supporting it at the Textron level when those [fuels] are available. We need the supply chain to come together to (a), produce it, regulators to approve it, and then make it available, so we’ll work on those [fuels] as we can.”

On the Velis Electro

While Scholl said that hybrid-electric is not “a complete solution,” it fits in well with the ethos of Textron eAviation. “[For now] there will still be a carbon aspect to it—but we sometimes get wrapped around the fact that we can’t solve the entire ‘lifecycle of the carbon’ aspect—let’s go do our part. We can try to get to a mogas [solution]—most of the Pipistrel products run on mogas today—and we’ve got the Velis, which is electric; we’ll continue that development. We’ve got the Panthera, which is hybrid-electric, so, [we’re] doing what we can through the spaces that we control to help improve the sustainability of aviation.”

The Velis Electro is “a fun airplane to fly,” Scholl agreed—and yes, there’s something odd about holding short of the runway with no engine running, but pilots will likely get used to it should the airplane become widely adopted.

“It’s capable within the vicinity of the airport,” said Scholl, “so if you’ve got an airport that you can go do maneuvers near, or you want to do pattern work, it will suit that mission right now. We’re focused on continuing the development of the platform—I don’t think the airframe [contains] anything that’s a challenge to us. What we’re waiting on is the intersection of the batteries and the airframe, because the airframe has to be a certain size to carry the necessary batteries.”

“I think Tine [Tomažič] and the Pipistrel team have a really good handle on the battery situation, and they’re really the only company in the world that’s done it. We’re not talking about it yet, but I think we have a plan for when we would see the next generation of electric propulsion come out,” Scholl concluded.

The Nuuva and UAM

The other part of Textron eAviation is the Nexus team, which is focused on urban air mobility (UAM). “That effort has shifted from being based with Bell to being based with the eAviation team,” said Scholl. “We’re still pulling resources from Bell…from Textron Aviation.“

“The reason why that’s important is that if you look at what Pipistrel brings to table, they obviously bring a product portfolio and a customer base that is really strong—they’ve delivered about 3,000 aircraft. But the Velis Electro is a great base to test the technology—the technology itself and with the regulators. You can take the learnings from that platform and apply [them] to the Panthera, which [has] a relatively known customer base with the infrastructure [that] already exists, to test out the technology so the regulators are comfortable with a fixed-wing aircraft like that. 

“The learnings from both those platforms can be applied to the Nuuva program, at Pipistrel, and a lot of the electric aspects of the Nuuva [V300] derive from the Velis technology. So, the motors, the battery systems—while the Velis is a new and novel design, the underlying technology of the aircraft is known to Pipistrel.”

“We’re doing flight controls, we’re doing electric propulsion, we’re doing thermal management around the motors and the batteries, so for us, the addition of Pipistrel gives us a logical step to bring different products to the marketplace, than being focused on one product..Pipistrel’s engineering team, their experience there, building and selling electric airplanes for a decade—it’s hard to buy that time and experience.”

Textron eAviation is actively working on the path to FAA certification on the Electro, which gained EASA certification in June 2020. “We’re talking with the FAA about the Velis…it’s been TC’ed by EASA, we just got U.K. validation, I don’t know that we’ve announced it yet but we just got the Mexico validation for the Velis, so we are checking the boxes around the world. 

“We need the FAA to work with us. There had been some work done between Pipistrel and the FAA prior to COVID, for various reasons during COVID it kind of stalled, so we’ve reinvigorated it. 

“I am hopeful that we will get a near-term path with the FAA to allow flight training in the Velis, because I think it will allow benefits to those flight schools, a lower cost—it’s about a fourth the cost of a combustion engine airplane [to operate], and it’s quiet, so you have less impact on the community.”

Scholl believes that eAviation has identified the specific knots to untangle. “The challenge for the FAA is that it is a new and novel technology to them, and the light sport rules with the FAA are a challenge. I have combed through the regulations in this area, and there’s a line in the light-sport classification that says it’s required to be a reciprocating engine. Otherwise, there’s nothing in the light sport rules that prohibit the Velis.”

For the near term, boosting the Electro’s operational capability in the U.S. under the current approval is the primary concern. “We are discussing with the FAA what the path looks like to bring this to a validation or some sort of certification level with the FAA.”

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Textron eAviation announced this week that the aircraft had secured approval under the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (U.K. CAA) to add to the primary-category certification it had received from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in June 2020.

“Achieving type certification by the U.K. CAA is a big milestone for Pipistrel in the U.K., as well as within the wider aviation industry,” said Gabriel Massey, president and managing director at Pipistrel, in a statement from Textron eAviation. “The Velis Electro is now the only type-certified electric aircraft that can operate in the U.K., and this opens up a world of possibility for sustainable flight.”

Textron acquired the assets of Pipistrel in a deal that was announced on March 17. Prior to its merger with Textron Aviation, Pipistrel had delivered more than 2,500 light aircraft–including gliders and both electric and traditionally powered airplanes–since it was founded in 1989. The new business unit focused on electric and other sustainable technology development, Textron eAviation, was formed after the merger.

The U.K. distributor for Pipistrel—Fly About Aviation—was instrumental in shepherding the process. “For us, electric aviation is the beginning of the runway to cleaner skies and we are delighted with the recent approval of the Velis Electro by the U.K. CAA,” said Sergey Grachev, founder of Fly About Aviation. “We can now reach even more U.K. pilots and continue telling the story of sustainable aviation.”

Hitting the Sustainability Target

The news comes ahead of the Farnborough International Airshow, running from July 18 through 22, and hosted in-person for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The show traditionally takes place in Farnborough, England, every two years, alternating with the Paris Air Show. The Velis Electro will be on display there, along with Textron Aviation’s portfolio of single- and multiengine piston, turboprop, and jet airplanes from Cessna and Beechcraft, along with Bell Helicopter.

Sustainability will be a theme at Farnborough, and the Velis Electro makes an important step in the process towards decarbonizing general aviation—specifically flight training. FLYING flew the two-seat trainer at the Inverness Airport (KINF) in Florida in April with U.S. distributor Right Rudder Aviation’s Andy Chan to test its suitability to the learn-to-fly mission.

The initial take? That the normally achieved in-flight time of around 45 minutes plus VFR reserves can be sufficient for typical pattern work and pre-solo maneuvers. Taking it out on cross-country training flights—especially student solo XCs—is not yet in the cards, so it needs to be supplemented with a traditional piston-engined-aircraft for that part of the syllabus.

Approval under FAA auspices is still in the works—and we expect that updates to battery capacity and/or system configuration would be next in line for the model’s development.

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Under terms of the transaction, Textron acquired Pipistrel for a cash purchase price of about $235 million. Pipistrel’s founder and CEO, Ivo Boscarol, will remain a minority shareholder of Pipistrel with a roughly 10 percent interest for two years, during which he will advise the company on product plans and strategies, Textron said.

Pipistrel is well known as a pioneer in the design, development, and certification of electric airplanes including the Velis Electro, a two-seat single certificated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in June 2020. The Velis is the only electric aircraft so far to receive full EASA type certification. 

• VIEW FROM ABOVE: A Sustainable Purchase for Textron

Pipistrel offers a line of gliders and light aircraft with electric and combustion engines and has delivered more than 2,500 aircraft worldwide since its founding in 1989. The company has also been developing additional hybrid and electric models.

Textron said Pipistrel is now part of its new Textron eAviation business, which will pursue a strategy to produce a family of sustainable aircraft for urban air mobility, general aviation, cargo and special missions. Rob Scholl, who has been leading Textron’s eAviation, has been named president and CEO of the segment.

As part of Textron, Pipistrel will gain access to greater resources, technical and regulatory expertise, and a global aircraft sales and support network. This will allow it to “accelerate its development and certification of electric and hybrid electric aircraft,” Textron said.

The company said Pipistrel will remain a distinct aviation brand within its current stable that includes the Cessna, Beechcraft, and Bell brands.

The post Textron Completes $235 Million Purchase of Pipistrel appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It took me a second to register what Andy Chan of Right Rudder Aviation meant as we completed steps in the before takeoff checklist. For a number of reasons—the electric motor doesn’t need to “warm up,” and we want to preserve every bit of battery juice for the flight ahead—it makes sense to “throttle back” to zero once we’d checked the battery status and a few other items.

Just one of many aha moments on my first electric-powered flight in Pipistrel’s Velis Electro.

A Lot of Questions

The Velis Electro has been EASA-certified for more than a year, and it operates under LSA rules in the U.S. Can this fully electric airplane hold its own in flight training right now? Or does it need another evolution of battery technology to find a place in a school’s lineup?

With Textron Aviation’s recent purchase of Pipistrel, those questions take on more significance. What exactly did TextAv get? Is the Velis Electro a solution for economical, sustainable flight training as it stands, or has the company invested in a platform with limited applicability in pilot development programs, as the Cessna Skycatcher has been viewed?

Taking It to the Sky

The act of flying requires committing ourselves to the air and testing out the numbers derived on engineering plans. We can pencil it out, but until we put our soul in the seat, those figures remain abstract.

So, when Chan offered me a flight from the Inverness Airport (KINF) in the Velis Electro following Sun ’n Fun Aerospace Expo last week, I jumped at the chance. With caution? As it turned out, not really, and once we left the pattern with the airplane, I understood why.

My mind switched over to “glider mode”—not because I had any lack of confidence in the electric powerplant in front of me, spinning a composite, three-blade, fixed-pitch propeller, also made by Pipistrel. I’ve flown behind enough piston engines to feel a healthy sense of skepticism about them all. Props stop for a lot of reasons. No, something else was going on in my pilot brain.

Power Management

The Velis Electro carries a maximum power rating of 65 kWh, which allows for a quick takeoff roll (around 1,000 feet on the 80 degree F morning) and an initial sea-level climb not unlike that of a Cessna 152. But like most powerplants, you don’t keep the engine at maximum power for very long if you want to have any range—nor if you want to preserve engine life. 

Upon reaching 75 knots indicated and a couple hundred feet agl, Chan had me pull the lever back to 40 kWh—more than enough to sustain our climb at a comfortable airspeed. Our endurance leapt from a mere 24 minutes to somewhere around 35 minutes. Once reaching 2,500 feet msl, I reduced the power again to 20 kWh, and we had 45 minutes, with 80 percent of the battery life remaining (there are two sets within the airframe).

We’d already been operating as a “flight lesson” for about 15 minutes, if you include the normal engine start, taxi, runup, takeoff, and climbout for an average training flight. I took the airplane through a series of maneuvers—slow flight, steep turns, stalls, and a lazy eight, for grins—and we still had some time to play before we would need to head back to the pattern for a few landings. It felt like the outlines of a normal pre-solo lesson.

Looking for Lift

But there was an additional factor I hadn’t considered until I cast around the central Florida landscape looking for cloud streets: We could gain time in the air if we found lift. I started thinking back to my initial glider training, and I recalled how every flight began, once off tow, with the same search and calculus towards buying a little more time aloft. 

It was an entirely comfortable feeling—provided I stayed within my mentally drawn range of the airport. And I mentioned it to Chan, and he agreed—he’s a glider instructor as well as an airplane CFI—glider pilots would likely grasp the concept of power (and lift) management better than most others transitioning to the airplane.

And then I thought, “Why aren’t we training all of our students to think of endurance in this way?” Perhaps some instructors do. Fuel exhaustion accidents make up an embarrassingly large percentage of those that general aviation incurs each year. We could use a rethink in this area of decision-making—there’s nothing magical about dead dinosaur juice for stretching aircraft range beyond a hard limit.

What About Cross-Country Flights?

Chan is up front about where the Velis Electro fits into his flight school operation—as a pre-solo trainer complemented by the Electro’s traditionally powered Virus, with a Rotax 912 S3 engine—for the cross-country portion of the syllabus.

He maintains that the current Velis Electro serves as an intermediate step that allows aviation training organizations (ATOs) to reduce costs and carbon footprint on the way to a zero-emissions world sometime in the future.

He’s adding to this with a plan to incorporate solar energy into Right Rudder Aviation’s physical plant in the near term. While he trailered the Velis Electro back to Inverness from Lakeland after the show, he could have made the flight comfortably, in his estimation—he just had too many airplanes to move in the post-event shuffle.

But What About the Recharge?

If there’s one big obstacle to using the Velis Electro in its current mode, it’s the delay incurred by needing to charge the battery fully between flights, a process that takes between one and two hours, depending on the outlet and charging unit used. While a one-hour turnaround isn’t out of line—given the time it often takes to call the fuel truck and make the debrief/re-brief exchange typical at many schools—two hours makes for a long wait between lessons. 

Swapping out battery packs is a future solution to this, or staggering lessons between the Velis Electro and its traditionally powered partner. But it still feels like it would work well—for now—in a boutique operation rather than a high-volume ATO or university program.

The Velis Electro features an empty weight of about 940 pounds (with batteries). Maximum weight is an artificially limited 1,320 lbs, when operated as an S-LSA in the U.S. Because of its EASA provenance and certification, it likely has room to grow beyond that. But Chan wouldn’t say yet.

For This Moment

The Velis Electro is fun to fly, with benign handling characteristics, and should adapt well into a primary training curriculum. Will its specific application be enough for early-adopting schools to take it on? That may be answered in part by the strong interest Chan says was expressed by such organizations at Sun ‘n Fun this year. 

All told, we need these intermediate steps in order to make progress on our path towards sustainable aviation. I have a feeling this challenge is ripe for an S-curve leap in technology—or more creative solutions such as the one currently in progress with Pipistrel.

The post My First Electric Flight appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Pipistrel has introduced several of its aircraft into the U.S. over the past five years, including the Panthera high-performance retract single and the Velis Electro, the world’s first all-electric airplane to gain EASA certification.

Andrew Chan, founder and COO of Right Rudder Aviation, spoke with FLYING and expressed his enthusiasm for serving the Pipistrel customer base—of both current and future pilots. The previous setup didn’t make much sense from a customer standpoint, Chan said, and now the company is poised to offer a more “concierge”-style experience for potential aircraft buyers as well as those looking to maintain and service their aircraft.

Chan expects up to three new Velis aircraft to come into Right Rudder Aviation this spring so that he can get them in front of folks. He also said that Part 23 certification on the Panthera high-performance single-engine with retractable gear is on track. Pipistrel has reported that certification is anticipated for the end of 2023.

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The Velis series of both normally powered and electric aircraft have proven popular overseas as well as with flight schools. Chan has been participating in recent meetings under the FAA MOSAIC (Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certificates) initiative that show encouraging signs that several Pipistrel models currently operated under ASTM could move to Part 23 approval under the new guidelines.

A Velis Electro was brought to Florida Tech last summer, and its implementation there has been successful as well, according to Chan. 

“It’s the right airplane for the mission,” said Chan of the Electro’s use in flight training. “It may not fit every need, but flight schools are responding to it.”

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