We Have Liftoff: First Electric Passenger Plane Takes Flight

(TNS) — Sustainable travel is the way of the future. In an effort to create methods of transport that lessen the impact of global warming, electric aircrafts have now taken to the sky. In September 2022, the Israeli-founded company Eviation Aircraft rolled out their latest airplane, Alice.

The nine-passenger commuter aircraft is listed as one of the first all-electric, zero-emission planes. Just a few months after its initial announcement, Alice has taken flight. On the morning of April 18, Alice took an eight-minute trip at 3,500 feet from Washington’s Grant County International Airport.

Gregory Davis, Eviation’s president and CEO spoke with CNN Business about the “historic moment.”

“We have not seen the propulsion technology change on the aircraft since we went from the piston engine to the turbine engine,” Davis said. “It was the 1950s that was the last time you saw an entirely new technology like this come together.”

CNN shared that Alice operates on battery technology comparable to an electric car. Equipped with a fast-charging battery, the plane can fly for up to two hours after charging for 30 minutes. The team at Eviation told the outlet that Alice could fly about 440 nautical miles with a max cruise speed of 287 miles per hour. That’s just half the speed of a Boeing 737, which has a max cruise speed of 588 miles per hour.

Eviation has been pushing for the launch of Alice since it was founded in 2015. The company aims to use the information gathered from Alice’s inaugural flight to change the place of the airline industry. They hope to achieve an FAA-certified aircraft by 2025 and to deliver to airlines by 2027.

“We’ve actually generated, frankly, terabytes of data with the data acquisition systems that we had on the aircraft, so we’re going to take a couple of weeks actually and review it to see how the aircraft performs versus our models and our analysis,” Davis said. “From there, we’ll understand what we need to do next.”

Martie Bowser is a journalist and public relations professional in Charlotte, NC. She enjoys amplifying the voices of POC and women that fill a void within their community. Her bylines include “person of interest” interviews, small business highlights, pop culture commentary, entertainment features, and everything Beyonce.

©2023 The Charlotte Observer, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.