Electra’s Hybrid Fixed-Wing Aircraft Snags Interest Among Helicopter Operators

Many EL9 customers operate fixed-wing aircraft. Increasingly, though, helicopter operators have shown interest in the design, which is still in the development phase, for its ultra-short takeoff and landing capability, which enables liftoffs and touchdowns with as little as 150 feet—about the length of a soccer field.

According to CEO Marc Allen, who spent more than a decade at Boeing before joining Electra in August, the nine-passenger aircraft offers versatility at a lower cost and higher safety level than conventional fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters. And rotorcraft operators are catching on.

“The first series of orders in the first couple years of the company had very strong U.S. representation, of course, and also had very strong fixed-wing representation,” Allen told FLYING. “With this release, what you see is a real global momentum and acceleration. Operators around the world are coming to understand the performance capabilities of the EL9, and they're really embracing them, especially in helicopter operations.”

The customers Electra announced Tuesday include operators in the U.S., India, Brazil, Nigeria, Turkey, and Senegal. Even before the announcement, Allen said, about 60 percent of the firm’s orders were international. But its customers now are more diverse than they once were.

Allen said Electra is seeing “more and more traction,” for example, from cargo operators such as Turkey’s Akansel.

“You can contrast [Akansel] with 5 Star Helicopter Tours out of Las Vegas, which is a U.S. passenger helicopter tour operator,” Allen said. “Obviously, opposite sides of the world, very different business models. But both are really able to use the EL9 for their use case.”

Passenger operators still comprise the bulk of Electra’s customers. But they intend to use the aircraft in different ways. For instance, Copenhagen AirTaxi, announced as a customer on Tuesday, also operates rotorcraft as Copenhagen Helicopter.

“The helicopter operator will be replacing some of their helicopter fleets with it,” Allen said. “The fixed wing-operator will be using this for a regional air mobility air taxi service. And both are going to be able to take advantage of these great value propositions around access, cost, noise, and emissions that the EL9 offers. They'll pull the levers in slightly different ways to fit their really individual use cases.”

Electra began accepting customer deposits last year but has not yet taken any nonrefundable predelivery payments. It is targeting FAA certification for the EL9 as a Part 23 normal category aircraft, with customer deliveries beginning in 2029. But according to Allen, demand will factor into the firm’s strategy for deliveries and regulatory approvals, which could shift the aircraft’s path to market.

“You really get a sense that there's a global interest in regional air mobility and what we can do with direct aviation,” he said. “This aircraft is just so…tremendously versatile that it can be used by operators in a lot of different ways to create value for them. It's unleashing access like people haven't been able to do before with fixed-wing, and it's doing it at crazy cost reductions for people who are doing it with helicopters.”

Direct aviation, as Electra describes it, is the idea of moving flight operations away from airports and closer to where passengers live and work. The EL9 will initially fly airport-to-airport before traveling from airports to non-airport locations, such as the roof of a mall. Eventually, the goal is to fly non-airport to non-airport—a prospect Allen believes is driving wide interest.

“This is a hinge moment,” the Electra CEO said. “This is, I think, like 2007, when Apple brought the iPhone into one place. And what they did was they intersected a number of emerging and developed technologies that yielded something people had always wanted…Likewise, everybody's always known that air travel ought to be connecting us from where we are to where we want to go, without long drives to airports, long security lines, waiting at gates for a long time. We've all wanted to be able to use the air the same way we use the roads.”

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