Future Flight: Cargo carrier
Airbus veterans design eSTOL for short-hop deliveries
Airflow, based in San Francisco, announced an ambitious vision for creating an aerial logistics network to move cargo quickly and efficiently over distances ranging from 20 to 500 miles, known in the supply chain logistics world as “middle-mile logistics.” The founders believe that electric short takeoff and landing aircraft can more efficiently address many of the needs of urban air mobility, and cargo transportation, than electric vertical takeoff and landing designs.
Airflow co-founder and CEO Marc Ausman said that he and fellow team members believe they can shave about $500 million off the cost of developing a new aircraft simply by switching from eVTOL to eSTOL, and relying more heavily on proven components and designs rather than creating something that looks like it flew off the set of a science fiction movie.
Airflow’s eSTOL concept aircraft is expected to require less than 150 feet of a 300-foot runway to take off or land—about the size of three helipads side by side, or a football field minus the end zones. Powered by an electric motor and flown by a single pilot, this short-hop specialist would be able to tote 500 pounds of cargo at a time, and can be certified under Part 23 with plenty of well-proven design elements, along with some “new technology that is focused on enabling short-field capabilities.”
The new aircraft will have a distributed electric propulsion design, a detail that calls to mind NASA’s X–57 Maxwell. An intriguingly named “virtual tailhook” is another feature, described as “a pilot assistance system that provides safe, repeatable landings on very short runways.”
