An aircraft with the wingspan of a regional airliner took off from a small airport in upstate New York this week, climbed to 1,100 feet, flew for nearly half an hour, and landed having used about $5 worth of electricity. The flight, carried out by Swedish-founded aerospace company Heart Aerospace, marks the largest battery-electric aircraft ever flown, according to the company.

A full-scale test of electric flight

The X1 demonstrator took off on 12 August from Plattsburgh International Airport, a regional hub serving a community of around 20,000 people near the Canadian border. The piloted aircraft measures 106 feet across the wings and 76 feet from nose to tail, with a takeoff weight of more than 25,000 pounds, roughly the scale of a small commercial airliner rather than a light experimental craft.

During the 27-minute flight, the all-electric propulsion system delivered more than one megawatt of power while running through a full test sequence of taxiing, takeoff, climbing, manoeuvring and landing. The flight was carried out under a special airworthiness certificate issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration for experimental aircraft.

“"With the first flight of X1, Heart Aerospace has demonstrated electric flight at the scale of a commercial airliner," said Anders Forslund, the company's founder and chief executive.”

From Gothenburg garage to Los Angeles factory

Heart Aerospace was founded in Gothenburg in 2018 by Anders Forslund and Klara Andreasson, growing out of research at Chalmers University of Technology. The company has since relocated its headquarters to Los Angeles, where it is building a pilot manufacturing plant, though its roots in Sweden, a country where public debate over flygskam, or "flight shame", helped push aviation emissions up the political agenda, remain part of its founding story.

The X1 itself will not enter commercial service. Its purpose, the company says, is to prove out battery, motor and control technology destined for the ES-30, a 30-seat hybrid-electric regional airliner that pairs battery power with a small backup generator for longer routes. Heart is targeting entry into service for the ES-30 in 2031, with United Airlines, Air Canada and JSX among the airlines that have signed commitments, together valued at $9.4 billion.

Heart expects the ES-30 to cut regional aircraft operating costs by more than 40 percent compared with the turboprop planes, such as certain Embraer models, that currently serve many short regional routes in North America and Europe. The savings would come from lower energy costs, reduced maintenance on simplified electric propulsion systems, and less aircraft downtime, the company says.

Why the low cost matters, and its limits

The headline figure, roughly $5 of electricity for a 27-minute flight, is a striking illustration of how cheaply batteries can move an aircraft compared with jet fuel, whose global average price rose sharply in early August, according to reporting cited by Interesting Engineering. But industry observers, including outlets such as Digital Trends, have cautioned that fuel is only one part of an airline's operating costs, and the X1 remains a technology demonstrator rather than a passenger-ready aircraft.

Battery weight and energy density remain the central engineering challenge for electric aviation, which is why Heart has settled on a hybrid design for its production aircraft rather than a fully battery-powered one. Even so, the X1 flight follows earlier milestones in the sector, including a 2019 test flight in Vancouver of a converted Harbour Air seaplane fitted with an electric motor, often cited as the first flight of a commercial aircraft adapted for all-electric power. Heart's flight goes further by testing a purpose-built aircraft at a scale closer to what regional airlines actually fly today.

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