Moving Beyond Kitty Hawk

Boeing has acquired full ownership of Wisk Aero, the California-based, Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) joint-venture undertaken by Boeing and Kitty Hawk Corporation—the latter now being wholly divested from the enterprise.

Kitty Hawk’s sale of its stake in Wisk follows the company’s 2022 decision to abandon work on its aviation and aerospace ventures and gradually shutter its operations in their entirety.

Notwithstanding the undisclosed but conceivably substantial sum of money Boeing ponied up to buy out Kitty Hawk’s interest in Wisk Aero, the redesignation of the latter as a fully-owned Boeing subsidiary appears to portend neither a massive influx of capital into the AAM concern nor significant changes to its operations or developmental timetable.

In January 2023, to fuel the continued development of its sixth-generation eVTOL, Boeing invested a princely $450-million into Wisk. In addition to vigorous exchanges of data and technology between the two companies, intermingling of Boeing’s and Wisk’s cultures was furthered by the ascension of Brian Yutko, longtime vice-president and chief engineer of Boeing’s sustainability and future mobility division, to the station of Wisk CEO. Mr. Yutko took the position in the wake of Wisk founder and CEO Gary Gysin’s decision to retire.

Mr. Yutko subsequently opined Boeing’s sole ownership of Wisk would “combine the best small-company innovative thinking with one of the biggest and deepest aerospace companies in the world.” Boeing’s expertise in the business of aircraft certification and extant relationships with the FAA are apt to prove invaluable to Wisk’s campaign to see its eVTOL type certified and manufactured at scale.

In stark contrast to sector competitors the likes of Joby, Archer, and Volocopter—each of which seeks to commence commercial production of its respective eVTOL concept in 2025—Wisk’s intends to bring its eVTOL offering to market sometime before 2030, so stated Mr. Yutko.

Unveiled on 03 October 2022, Wisk’s sixth-generation prototype proved an elegant synthesis of conventional and avant-garde technologies. The all-electric VTOL contraption attains and sustains flight by dint of a lift + cruise scheme in which its twelve propellers articulate to provide both vertical and horizontal thrust.

Once airborne, the vehicle transitions to forward, wing-borne flight—its six, forward, five-blade tractor propellers providing thrust, and its six, four-blade aft propellers locking into an aerodynamically advantageous, stationary configuration in which the planes of the propellers’ disks lie parallel to the aircraft’s longitudinal axis.

Excepting a preponderance of under-wing booms and propeller assemblies, the architecture of Wisk’s sixth-generation eVTOL is surprisingly unassuming—comprising a single high-mounted, high-aspect-ratio main-wing spanning fifty-feet, and a  fuselage that bears a passing resemblance to that of a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter fitted out with a conventional empennage in place of a tail-rotor. A forward baggage compartment—or frunk—is located in the vessel’s nose.

The four-passenger, pilotless machine has an advertised cruise speed of 110-120-knots, and a cruise altitude of 2,500 to four-thousand-feet AGL. Wisk claims the vehicle is capable of traversing ninety-miles on a 15-minute battery-charge.

Safety of flight is facilitated by Wisk’s leveraging of the selfsame proven technologies that account for more than 93-percent of the automated in-flight functions of modern commercial aircraft. The sixth-generation eVTOL utilizes sophisticated detect-and-avoid systems and logic-driven, procedural-based, decision-making software that provides reliable, deterministic outcomes. Notwithstanding the robustness and redundancy of its autonomous capabilities, Wisk’s air-taxis are monitored in perpetuity by multi-vehicle supervisors that provide human oversight of every flight and retain the ability to assume control of the aircraft if necessary.

With a target per-passenger-mile price of three-dollars, Wisk’s sixth-generation aircraft is designed to democratize flight—at least to a degree consistent with extant technological and economic constraints.

FMI: www.boeing.com