After months of flight-testing a prototype capable of taking off and landing with 46m (150ft) of runway, US aircraft developer Electra has revealed the design for its proposed production aircraft – the EL9 Ultra Short.
The company gave the public a glimpse of its conceptual aircraft during a launch event in Manassas, Virginia, with company executives touting the “blown-lift” design’s potential to disrupt existing markets for nine-seat passenger aircraft.
Chief executive Marc Allen told FlightGlobal on 11 November that the EL9 platform builds off the momentum created by Electra’s EL-2 Goldfinch demonstrator.
“We recognised in testing that we could fly payloads at ranges that no battery-electric could get,” Allen says. “We hear a lot from the battery-only platforms about their range, or we hear a lot about their payload, but we never hear about payload-range.
“That gave us a huge confidence boost to go direct to the EL9,” he says. “At every step, what we’re seeing here is gathering momentum and a sense of competence coming out of the way the data lines up with what we saw in the model, wind tunnel and real-world performance. It’s giving us confidence that now is the time to make this pivot toward product.”
Electra believes the EL9’s distributed hybrid-electric propulsion and blown-lift aerodynamics will set the aircraft apart from those of its competitors.
Allen says the design – which will be finalised within the next 12 months – is intended to show the market the aircraft’s “outer mould line, so you can see what the plane is going to look like, because at this point that OML is really getting locked down”.
Electra plans to produce a full-size, nonconforming prototype of EL9 before assembling a trio of production-conforming aircraft that will be used in for-certification flying with the Federal Aviation Administration.
First flight is expected in 2027, with service-entry targeted for 2029.
While Electra is seen as a player in the broader advanced air mobility sector, featuring a host of ambitious aircraft and propulsion designs, Allen says that the EL9 is “just an airplane”.
“It just happens to fly 330nm with nine passengers, nine bags and two pilots; it just happens to fly into known icing,” he says. “It does all of that, yet, it can also land in 150ft.
“The airplane is capable of building new markets, but those will come after the airplane first expands and disrupts existing markets,” he continues. “That’s the beauty of the EL9’s business model and that’s why we’re so confident about launching the product.”
By the first quarter of 2026, Allen says, Electra plans to ”lock down the performance guarantees for customers, at which point we’ll go back to those 2,100 provisional orders” from customers, seeking to firm aircraft orders and secure cash deposits.
GEARING FOR PRODUCTION
Electra now turns attention to pursuing type certification of the EL9 with the FAA and “building an airplane production company”, Allen says.
“One of the reasons this moment is so important is what it takes to pivot from being a company that just designed the airplane to now being a company that builds and produces repeatedly the same specified configuration over and over again in excellence,” he says.
Electra has yet to identify where it plans to manufacture its aircraft. It is currently considering either a “greenfield” approach – building its own manufacturing facility – or partnering with existing manufacturers. Allen expects to make a decision within the next six months.
“We’re preparing to run an RFP process across seven or eight states to see which would be the most suitable in terms of availability of talent and favourability of aerospace connectivity,” he says. “Obviously, rail and road connectivity matter for a supply chain and you care about things like the state’s support for business.”
Whether Electra will go the route of US air taxi companies Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation by partnering with major automotive manufacturers, Allen declines to say. But the company envisions a production line with capacity for up to 400 units annually – a figure well beyond the output for most product lines in aerospace manufacturing.
“I will say that other OEMs are the target set and I won’t specify what categories of OEMs they are,” he says.
Allen, formerly Boeing’s head of strategy, succeeded founder John Langford as CEO of Electra in August. At Boeing, he witnessed first-hand the difficulties of mass-producing major airframe components with carbon-composite materials.
The EL9 will feature a metal fuselage and some carbon composite components.
“For me, one of the real learnings from Boeing was how challenging composite repair can be,” Allen says. “Especially in some of the environments where we anticipate EL9 will operate, we see that being doubly challenging… We don’t need to have the airplane down because you can’t get composite repair in a far-off location.”
That last point is critical, as Electra envisions the EL9 will be operated in “places where people haven’t flown yet across Southeast Asia, Africa and India”.
“As a result, we think the metal fuselage is a better answer,” he says.
LOOKING AHEAD
Electra is focused on developing its nine-passenger “ultra short” aircraft, but Allen believes the company’s technology can be scaled up in the future.
Earlier this week, the start-up secured a contract with NASA to explore broader applications – including commercial aircraft of up to 200 seats to potentially challenge the narrowbody jet market by the middle of the century.
”They put us down in line with the largest award for a reason,” Allen says. “They want us to help think through, for example, how battery energy-density changes what we can achieve in a distributed electric-hybrid propulsion aircraft system, and they want to think about the value that brings to a 200-seat level.”
Allen declines to say whether Electra could develop a follow-on aircraft targeting the regional jet market.
“It’s not immediately obvious to me what the next step is, whether it’s 19, 30, 72, 95 [seats],” he says. ”Those arguments will play themselves out over time, but we are not ready at this point to do anything other than focus fanatically on the nine-seater.”
