The plane is the answer to man’s eternal yearning to fly, from the ill-fated Icarus to Leonardo Da Vinci, says Rani Plaut, CEO and co-founder of AIR, the company developing it.
It could equally be described as a flying sportscar or a heavy-lifting drone – and it doesn’t fit neatly to any category of airborne vehicle because it genuinely breaks the mould.
Flight technology has become ever more complex since Wilbur and Orville Wright’s historic first flight in 1903.
But AIR ONE brings it down to earth – so to speak – with a two-seater plane that prizes simplicity above all.
It’s basically a very souped-up, AI-enhanced version of the inexpensive drone you can buy your kids for their birthday or Chanukah.
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It has just eight moving parts – two motors on each corner – and that’s it. Everything else is static. There’s a lot of remarkably clever stuff going on under the bonnet, for sure. But there’s almost nothing to go wrong.
It’s easier than driving a car, says Plaut. “Much easier. Up is up, down is down, forward is forward. It’s very forgiving because you have a buffer, a technological buffer.”
That buffer is AIR’s own patented technology, called Fly-By-Intent. You tell the aircraft what you want to do, and the computers do all the hard stuff that a traditional pilot would otherwise do. There are no pedals and no throttle, just you and the joystick. The rear motors spin faster to go forwards, the right motors spin faster to steer left, and so on. You do need some training to fly an AIR ONE, but not much. In the US you can qualify with a daytime-only “sports licence” that requires just 15 hours of training. The UK Civil Aviation Authority has yet to say what you’ll need here.
A caveat at this stage. Nobody – not even Plaut, the boss – has yet flown in an AIR ONE. The first crewed flight is set for July, in Wisconsin, US.
That’s not to say the technology is not already tried and tested. Unmanned versions of the identical plane – with a cargo hold instead of a cockpit – are already in operation, controlled remotely by drone operators.
AIR says it has contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defence, though it cannot discuss details.
The US military has also, reportedly, been evaluating the possible use of AIR ONE as tensions in the Strait of Hormuz continue to disrupt logistics.
But what sets this plane aside from other light aircraft, including other eVTOLs (Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing), is the fact that so many people – 3,300 and counting – want to own one because they want to fly.
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“About 2,400 of them are US citizens,” said Plaut, “with customers from all 50 states.
“I’ve spoken to hundreds of them, some of them are pilots, but 60 per cent are not. There are people with ranches in Utah and Kansas and Texas.
“You have people in Florida who are used to flying their small helicopter to the office, you have people who would like to fly to Lake Tahoe.
“You have people who have a summer house but it takes them an hour and 40 minutes to get there because of traffic.
“I can tell you that it doesn’t matter what they do, they all want to fly. So there is a core desire to be in the air.”
The AIR ONE is also designed to fit into everyday life. The wings fold, so it can fit in a standard parking space or garage. It has a top speed of 155mph and it can cover 100 miles on a full one-hour charge, from a standard electric car charger.
“It uses a Tesla socket,” says Plaut. “The battery is the same size as a Tesla Model S, 76 kilowatt hours, so it takes the same time to charge.”
That’s the only running cost, aside from regular inspections, although the plane is programmed to monitor itself and flags any issues.
Compared to a fixed-wing aircraft, with combustion engines, fuel lines, oil pumps and countless other moving parts, there’s virtually nothing that can go wrong.
AIR ONE has four pairs of motors, each running off a separate battery, and has far more power than it needs – it has 771HP (horsepower) available at takeoff, but uses just 100HP while cruising.
It’s also designed with built-in redundancies. Lose one motor from a pair and the other will still do the job and stabilise the aircraft.
And if, by a million-to-one chance, things do go catastrophically wrong, there’s the ballistic parachute – not for a person, but for the plane itself.
Plaut is an accidental aviation pioneer. He’s ex-Israeli Air Force, with a background in maths and physics before he co-founded AIR.
Now he’s looking forward to the day, not so far from now, when he’ll be flying to work.
