A former MIT class project is becoming an $850 million effort to manufacture a new kind of aircraft in Ohio.
Electra began as an idea for a hybrid plane that could take off from shorter runways than traditional airplanes but have more range and speed than all-electric aircraft. Now, like other great MIT projects, it's making an impact far beyond campus.
The company's fixed-wing aircraft is designed to make travel easier, especially for people who don't live in the immediate vicinity of a major airport. The plane features a smaller, more efficient engine than traditional planes, along with batteries to give it added power during takeoffs and landings.
With a range of around 1,200 miles and a cruising speed of around 200 miles per hour, the plane could improve the travel experience for many kinds of trips while cutting down on fuel use. And, given the much shorter runway needs and quieter operation than traditional planes, the plane can leverage unique access points such as barges, parking lots, and soccer fields to take off and land instead of traditional airports.
"Helping people travel between 50 and 250 miles is the sweet spot for this technology," says Electra Director of Technology Development Chris Courtin SM '19, PhD '24. "This can be a better option than driving or commercial airlines for many kinds of trips. There's a lot of people traveling in that range and a huge amount of friction in existing ground and air transport systems. This could be a big benefit to those people."
Courtin has worked on the hybrid plane concept since its inception, first as part of a class project at MIT, then as a teacher's assistant, and finally as part of his PhD thesis. The company was founded by another alumnus, John Langford '79, SM '83, SM '85, PhD '87, and counts two MIT professors - Mark Drela and John Hansman - as its founding technical advisors.
"The company has really benefited from a strong collaboration with MIT," Courtin says. "One of the compelling things about MIT is it gives people space to marry the theoretical side with the practical side - to actually go build the airplane and see if people will buy it."
Electra has already built and flown a two-seated version of its plane. Last month, the company announced an $850 million investment to scale production of its nine-passenger aircraft in Springfield and Clark County, Ohio. The investment, which is expected to create 1,975 new jobs, means Electra will be building the next chapter of aviation in the state where engine-powered human flight first began.
From concept to company
The origins of Electra date back to a 2017 project among graduate students in MIT class 16.886 (Air Transportation Systems Architecting). Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft were garnering excitement at the time, and Courtin's group wanted to compare that approach to alternative designs.
"It was an open-ended, project-based class where you look at developments in aerospace," Courtin says. "My group realized short takeoff and landing aircraft had a lot of advantages over eVTOL for getting people where they wanted to go. We started exploring using the same technology - lightweight, electric motors suitable for aviation - to make a new aircraft, which we now call the ultra-short takeoff and landing aircraft."
The idea was to use batteries and small electric motors to shorten the runway and landing space of a fixed-wing aircraft while leveraging blown wind to travel farther distances in the sky than would be possible with electric motors alone.
The concept was developed further in several senior design classes co-taught by Drela and Hansman, while Courtin served as a teacher's assistant. In the classes, student collaborators built a subscale model of the aircraft to prove it would work, testing it in MIT's Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel and in flight. Courtin went on to work on parts of the concept for his PhD.
In 2019, John Langford, who had been running the aircraft company Aurora Flight Sciences, which had recently been acquired by Boeing, got involved. Electra was officially formed that year.
As a first step, Electra's team built the EL2, a two-seated version of its aircraft. That included designing and testing the hybrid propulsion system. The EL2 completed its first test flights in 2023 and has since completed over 200 flights.
The aircraft has a gas-powered generator located in its nose and two batteries under the floor, both of which feed the propellers during takeoff and landing. When cruising, the aircraft uses the generator, which can also charge the batteries.
"The gas generator is like a traditional turbine engine used in a conventional aircraft, only instead of driving a propeller or fan it drives an electric generator," Courtin explains. "That feeds power to the eight motors on the wing. It allows you to have a smaller and more efficient engine because you can size it for cruising, not takeoff and landing conditions."
The eight motors create a blown lift effect that allows the aircraft to take off and land in areas about the length of a soccer field, much shorter than the runways for conventional airplanes.
For travelers, "the big benefit is you can save a lot of time," Courtin says. "You don't need to go to an airport, and you don't have to go to a train station."
Operators could also maximize existing infrastructure at airports:
"If you're three hours away from the nearest major airport, there's a lot of friction in that," Courtin says. "With Electra, we could fly you to the nearest major airport, and you don't need to use a runway, so it doesn't add to congestion at these very low-capacity places."
Electra's aircraft are also more affordable than traditional aircraft and far more quiet.
"The large number of propellers means you can make them much quieter than if you only had one or two," Courtin explains. "That's important because helicopters are restricted from operating in places they otherwise could because of the noise."
Scaling up
Construction on Electra's 96-acre Ohio manufacturing facility will begin next year. The facility's initial phase will be capable of producing 400 of its nine-seat aircraft each year. The next phase will expand capacity to around 800 aircraft per year.
Electra's team could see their aircraft shuttling people to major airports for longer trips or ultimately eliminating the need for conventional airports entirely.
"If you don't have an existing airport, that's a very difficult thing to build these days," Courtin says. "But finding a soccer field-sized area is not hard, especially with our noise reductions."
Electra's team is also exploring applications around military logistics, cargo transport, and humanitarian missions.
For the passenger aircraft application, Electra's team believes that as it scales production, it will be able to make the passenger aircraft accessible to a broad swath of travelers.
"If we can keep the fixed-wing design simplicity and make this large enough, then the per-seat cost could get to a range where a lot of people would have access to this," Courtin says. "It wouldn't just be a luxury product, so it could help a lot of people."
