A group of young French aerospace engineers who were part of Airbus’s plans for the E-Fan electric light aircraft are pursuing their dream of bringing an eVTOL to market through a start-up called Ascendance Flight Technologies. Airbus stopped the E-Fan project in April 2017 and the following year Jean-Christophe Lambert, Thibault Baldivia, and Clement Dinel were joined by Benoit Ferran to form the Toulouse-based company, which is working to get the four-passenger, hybrid-electric Atea model into commercial service by 2025.
The fixed-wing design, which features a pair of ducted fans for vertical lift in the inner-wing section and a single three-bladed propeller in the nose, is expected to deliver a range of up to 280 miles and speeds of 124 mph. Lambert, who is CEO, told FutureFlight last month that the team expects to have a full-scale prototype ready to begin test flights in 2023.
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