Beta Technologies Completes First Piloted Flight of Alia CTOL

Beta Completes First Piloted Flight With Production Aircraft

Beta Technologies has completed a piloted test flight with the first electric aircraft rolled off the production line at its factory in Burlington, Vermont.

On Nov. 13, Beta’s founder, CEO and test pilot Kyle Clark conducted the flight in an Alia CTOL, the electric conventional-takeoff-and-landing aircraft that Beta plans to certify ahead of its electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) version. All told, the flight lasted nearly an hour, “including a takeoff, climb to 7,000 ft., handling qualities evaluation, stability and control test points, and initial airspeed expansion prior to flying several approaches and a normal landing,” the company said.

“This start of our production CX300 flight-test campaign is a result of years of hard work and focus on studying customer requirements, hard engineering, manufacturing, production, quality and test,” Clark said in a statement, using the FAA-registered name for the Alia CTOL. “We’re now one step closer to putting this technology into the hands of our customers.”

First flight came after the FAA inspected the aircraft for safety and compliance. After that, Beta was granted a multi-purpose R&D and Market Survey Experimental Airworthiness certificate, allowing for the aircraft’s use in company flight testing—but not for credit toward type certification. The certificate grants permission for Beta to operate the Alia CTOL under VFR (visual flight rules), IFR (instrument flight rules) and at night, which the company described as a “sign of the FAA’s trust in our program, flight safety record, and processes.”


Moving forward, Beta said it will accumulate 50 hr. of flight time with the new aircraft, at which point it will be authorized to transition to its Market Survey and Crew Training certificate. This will enable the company to train additional test pilots and fly beyond its test facilities in Burlington and Plattsburgh, New York.

Beta said it plans to continue production of both Alia CTOL and Alia VTOL variants. The company wants to go to market first with its Alia CTOL potentially as soon as late 2025, and then proceed with the campaign to certify the Alia VTOL, currently expected in 2026, according to SMG Consulting.

The new production aircraft is the first to be manufactured using recently installed aerospace-grade tooling at the 200,000-ft.² South Burlington plant, which opened in December 2023. It is also the first to be equipped with Garmin's G3000 PRIME integrated flight deck and avionics suite.

Speaking to Aviation Week in October, Clark described Beta’s ongoing transition, from an R&D-focused startup to a serial aircraft manufacturer with matured production processes and systems, as a major learning experience for the company.

“We’re a very strong company technologically in things like power electronics, motors and controls and multi-physics engineering, but there’s a different skill set and muscle group that we had to develop around being an FAA-conforming production company,” Clark said. “We’re getting processes in place, getting people trained, and making sure that we document it all in a secure way. It’s not the most fun part of aerospace, but it’s really important.”

The first test flight with the production Alia CTOL came shortly after Beta concluded a $318 million Series C funding round in late October, taking its total amount raised to $1 billion.

With a strong balance sheet, continued development progress, and a pragmatic strategy of going to market first with a non-passenger-carrying CTOL aircraft, Beta appears poised to be among the first U.S. advanced air mobility startups to receive type certification from the FAA.

“To tell you the truth, if there is one company that can make certification next year, I think it would be Beta,” says Sergio Cecutta, president of SMG Consulting.