While walking the line of NBAA-BACE, ANN Editor-in-Chief Jim Campbell spotted one of Volocopter’s demonstrators on the ramp, giving attendees a close-up look at the electric VTOL aircraft. Oliver Reinhardt, Chief Certification Officer for Volocopter, talked a little bit about the path to certification the company has navigated. The model at NBAA, as it happens, was an older iteration of the Volocopter flagship design, a Gen-4. The 5th generation sports some revisions to the aerodynamics and battery efficiency, but most of the basic elements are the same to the average NBAA passer-by.
Volocopter spent 2023 moving on from one test element to another, working their way to full airworthiness and type certification for their design. It hasn’t been the most simple path, either, since eVTOL designers were starting from scratch on every front. Reinhardt says their European roots have given them plenty to work with from the EASA, thanks to their Special Rotorcraft Airworthiness Standards, and he expects FAA criteria to more or less carry over.
Interestingly, he said that a hiccup in development came during the changeover from uncrewed flight testing to actual flight testing. Optimizing controls for remote control doesn’t lend much comfort to crewed operation, so Volocaopter engineers had to go back and re-tune its control behavior to feel well-sorted to their test pilot. With much learning to be done, Volocopter still has lots of work to do - but that’s a check in for NBAA ‘24 in October.
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