Heart Aerospace is offering a 30-seat electric regional airliner in place of the 19-seat model it announced in 2020. The company, which is now backed by Air Canada and Saab, reports that it is adding a pair of turbogenerators to a quartet of electric motors to provide energy reserves it says airlines will need for viable operations and also to give the option of extending the range to 800 km (500 miles).

Brazilian on-demand charter flight broker Flapper has entered into an agreement with hypersonic, hydrogen-powered aircraft developer Destinus to open high-speed cargo delivery flight routes in Latin America and Europe. It may also look into the potential for passenger services.

Miami-based charter and cargo flight provider Global Crossing Airlines Group, or GlobalX, has provisionally agreed to purchase 50 all-electric Alice aircraft from Eviation. On September 15, Eviation announced that GlobalX has signed a letter of intent to buy the commuter aircraft, with the first deliveries expected in 2027.

Mako Aerospace has launched a seed funding campaign to finance work to build and fly a full-scale prototype of its Forerunner electric-ducted-fan engines. The young Scottish company is developing a family of propulsion systems with power ratings above 800 kW that it said could be used for new or existing airliners seating 10 or more passengers.

Under a memorandum of understanding, Chile-based Ecocopter is conducting joint studies with Airbus regarding possible plans to launch eVTOL aircraft services in that country as well as in Peru and Ecuador. The European aerospace group aims to certify its four-passenger CityAirbus NextGen eVTOL aircraft in 2025.

Jetson says it has raised $8 million toward its $10 million seed funding target as it starts flight testing technology demonstration examples of its single-seat eVTOL vehicle at a private airfield in Italy. The start-up says it will now deliver the $92,000 vehicle fully assembled to customers, rather than as self-build kits, and claims to have collected around 500 down payments of $22,000.

Electric aircraft developer Eviation has completed a high-speed taxi rotation test with its all-electric Alice commuter aircraft. The taxi test, which took place on September 18 at Grant County International Airport near Moses Lake in Washington state, was the final milestone ahead of the aircraft’s highly anticipated debut test flight, an Eviation spokesperson told FutureFlight. Eviation has repeatedly said it plans to fly Alice for the first time this summer. Today marks the first day of the fall season in the northern hemisphere, and the Alice has yet to take flight. However, with the successful completion of the high-speed taxi rotation test, the first flight appears to be imminent.

The main focus for Mayman Aerospace (formerly JetPack Aviation) is the Speeder VTOL vehicle, which was developed following the company’s initial work on a personal jet pack. It hopes to get the Speeder into initial military operations by around 2024.