Eve Air Mobility (Eve) recently celebrated the first partial transition flight for the engineering prototype of its electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

 This flight is a milestone for the aircraft manufacturer, as it enables Eve to continue expanding the eVTOL aircraft’s flight envelope and keep validating the system’s performance. 

During the flight, Eve’s eVTOL activated its rear pusher propeller and transitioned from vertical to wing-borne flight, achieving a 27-knot stabilized speed and a 30-knot maximum ground speed with the pusher activated up to 1,2000 RPM.

Key details of the flight include:

• Duration: Three minutes and nine seconds
• Distance: 0.84 nautical miles
• Maximum height: 90 feet above ground level

After this milestone, the flight test engineering team at Eve can now proceed with analyzing ongoing loads and structures to expand the aircraft’s flight envelope. These plans also involve datalink testing to enable radio link performance validations and operations at 50-knot speeds.

 Eve intents to add more flights with pusher activation to the flight-test campaign as well, with the goal of extending the eVTOL’s airspeed envelope.

Eve Air Mobility CEO Johann Bordais said, "This first partial transition flight is an important milestone in Eve's development journey."

Bordais continued, "Successfully activating the pusher propulsion system in flight validates a key aspect of our aircraft design and brings us one step closer to delivering safe, efficient and scalable air mobility solutions."

Eve Air Mobility Head of Engineering Marcelo Basile said, "This flight successfully demonstrated pusher activation in flight and validated key performance targets at the start of the transition phase."

Basile added, "The data collected will support continued envelope expansion as we advance toward higher speeds and more complex transition flight testing."