Airbus has just announced that it had made the first flight of its unmanned taxi flying to Pendleton, Oregon, in northern California. It was in the select committee that A3, its subsidiary of Silicon Valley, did the first take off of “Vahana”, a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (Adav).
The small aircraft took off on January 31st up to five meters high propelled by its eight electric motors before landing safely. Originally, the Californian innovation center of Airbus had planned a first flight before the end of 2017 but a “small shift” was decided by US teams to ensure total security for this first test .
A flight of 53 seconds
“The first flight lasted 53 seconds,” according to Airbus. The next day, the autonomous flying taxi made a second flight. “Vahana’s first flight demonstrates Airbus’ ability to drive ambitious ideas quickly without compromising on quality or safety, which is our historical know-how. For A3 this proves that we can carry out significant innovations with an aggressive timetable in order to confer an advantage for Airbus “reacted Rodin Lyasoff, CEO of A3 and former project director Vahana.
Vahana arrived at the end of November in a 3000-square-meter hangar in the Pendleton, Oregon, airport area where Airbus-backed A3 crews had prepared the aircraft for its first flight by running a series. ground tests including powering up. The monitoring of the test flights, which will gradually increase both in the altitude reached and in the range is carried out from a semi-trailer that has been converted into a mobile control room. According to some sources other test flights would be considered around mid-February.
