Thomas Gnau
Dayton Daily News, Ohio
(TNS)

When GE Aerospace’s Saab 340B hybrid electric test aircraft landed at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport in recent days, it was a homecoming of sorts.

For the first time, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, GE’s hybrid electric test aircraft landed in the Cincinnati region, home to GE’s Evendale headquarters — and some 90 minutes from the Dayton GE EPISCenter (Electrical Power Integrated Systems Center) on the University of Dayton campus, on River Park Drive.

The plane spends most of its time in upstate New York. But it’s in Dayton that the plane’s unique propulsion system has seen extensive testing and refinement in recent years.

Working with NASA, BETA Technologies and Boeing, GE says the team this year hit another milestone — completing the world’s first hybrid-electric flight above 30,000 feet in May, high above upstate New York. The aviation giant then flew the test plane daily during the Farnborough International Airshow in late July.

What’s different about this plane? It pairs a megawatt-class hybrid-electric propulsion system with traditional gas turbine engines.

While hybrid electric cars are a common sight on the road, sustained hybrid electric flight has been “elusive,” as GE Aerospace puts it on its web site.

For the past five years, Christine Andrews and her colleagues have been trying to do something about that. Andrews is the executive leader of GE Aerospace’s hybrid electric team.

Andrews told the Dayton Daily News that Dayton is considered the company’s “home testing base” for this burgeoning technology.

“The EPISCenter is ultimately the home where we do all the electric powertrain” work, Andrews said. “That is the foundation of where we do all that (electric power) testing.”

The Dayton team also delivered the power converters needed for this system, she said.

“The work that was performed at the EPISCenter, I mean, it’s fundamental,” she added.

The technology was designed in GE’s Evendale headquarters and tested extensively from 2021 until earlier this year in Dayton.

“This is not a lab experiment or a one-off prototype,” Mohamed Ali, GE Aerospace’s president and chief executive of commercial engines and services, declared at Farnborough in July.

Ali was referring to the Saab 340B aircraft — the one that landed at Cincinnati this week — that had been modified for use in NASA’s “Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration” project.

“It’s a meaningful step forward for future propulsion, and it helps validate hybrid electric technology as a credible path for the next-generation engine,” Ali said this summer.

So where is all of this going? Can hybrid electric technology become as common in the air as it is on the road?

“Yes, 100%,” Andrews said in an interview. “That’s our vision and goal for the future.”

Proving that altitude was no longer a challenge for hybrid propulsion was a big deal, Andrews said. That’s where airliners live, after all, she noted.

Andrews and a GE spokeswoman linked this innovation to the work that Joby Aviation is doing in Dayton building its electric vertical takeoff-and-landing aircraft, to the work that Electra will bring to Springfield, where the company will build its EL9 Ultra Short aircraft, to innovations pursued by Air Force researchers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and beyond.

“This is that next step in aviation history,” Andrews said.

GE is a big local employer. In Beavercreek, the company has a little over 500 employees, with about 1,400 workers total in the Dayton area across several sites. Across Southwestern Ohio, Evendale-based GE counts about 9,000 employees.

ELECTION 2026

Coverage from the Dayton Daily News, Springfield News-Sun and Journal-News

Early voting is underway for the Nov. 3 election, which will decide the direction of our region and state — and possibly the nation — for years to come. Every statewide executive office is an open contest. The outcome of Ohio’s U.S. Senate and congressional races could determine the balance of power in Washington, D.C. Voters will decide who will represent them in the Ohio Statehouse and in other races. Plus, several tax measures on the ballot will decide how much you pay in taxes and the future of area schools and other local governments.

Here are information and tools to help you cast an informed ballot.

* » What’s different this election, and what you need to know to vote

* » VOTER GUIDE: Compare candidates's platforms and priorities

* » Go here for all of our Dayton Daily News election coverage

* » Go here for all of our Journal-News election coverage

* » Go here for all of our Springfield News-Sun election coverage

*

* » What issues matter to you? Voters by and large chose affordability, economic issues

*

© 2026 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio). Visit www.daytondailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.