Archer Aviation has successfully conducted the first-ever full transition flight with its Maker eVTOL technology demonstrator. The milestone came just under 12 months after the company first flew the two-seat aircraft as part of work to develop the full-scale Midnight eVTOL air taxi it revealed in November.

Lilium says it has started to take pre-delivery payments worth 50 percent of the $7 million to $10 million price of the 50 Pioneer Edition examples of its eVTOL aircraft. The company aims to firm up provisional sales agreements during 2023 covering 603 Lilium Jets as it starts to build the first full-scale, preproduction prototype that it intends to start flight testing in 2024.

In a flurry of announcements at its Sustainability Summit in Toulouse, Airbus said it will start ground and flight testing of a fuel cell-based hydrogen powertrain by the middle of the 2020s on its A380 ZeroE demonstrator aircraft. The company also announced partnerships with Renault, HyPort, and space group Ariane.

In May 2023, up to 25 teams will compete in the Pulitzer Electric Aircraft Race along a 1,000-nm route between Epperley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska, and Dare County Regional Airport (KMQI) near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The National Aeronautic Association has opened the registration process for any electric-powered aircraft, including new eVTOL models, fixed-wing airplanes, and helicopters.

VPorts says its planned Advanced Air Mobility Integrator Center in Dubai will kick-start the launch of eVTOL aircraft commercial services in the United Arab Emirates. It is raising funds for the facility at the Mohammed bin Rashid Aerospace Hub and also for a network of vertiports at industrial sites across the country.

Xwing, a California-based company developing autonomous flight technology, has been contracted by the FAA to participate in the agency’s Crosscutting Operations Strategy and Technical Assessment (COSTA) air traffic management research project. Xwing will work with the FAA and NASA to study how remotely piloted aircraft can be safely integrated with the National Airspace System while flying in complex environments with flight restrictions, such as fire traffic areas where other aircraft are actively working to suppress wildfires. 

Joby Aviation subsidiary H2Fly is developing a liquid hydrogen propulsion system that it believes could power 40-seat airliners on flights of up to around 1,250 miles by the end of the 2020s. The European Commission has put the German company in charge of its Project Heaven initiative to prove the case for hydrogen-powered aircraft as part of the Horizon 2020 zero-carbon initiative.

Archer has released a short video that it says shows its Maker eVTOL technology demonstrator making a first full transition from vertical hover to full wing-borne cruise flight. The flight took place in California on November 29. At just under a minute in length, the video footage features several close-ups of different phases of flights. At around the 26-second mark, viewers see two of the aircraft's six tilting forward propellers completing the transition from their hover to cruise position. Then, at around 32 seconds, there are wider shots showing the Maker in wing-borne cruise, with the money shots starting at around 35 seconds with both the tilting forward propellers and the still-vertical rear propellers clearly in view during the flight. According to Archer, the Maker logged a speed of 91 kts (105 mph) during the milestone flight.

The main focus for Mayman Aerospace (part of the JetPack Aviation group) is developing the Speeder VTOL vehicle, which was developed following the company’s initial work on a personal jet pack. It hopes to be ready to present the vehicle for certification by the FAA in 2024, and will also seek clearance to export it to non-U.S. military customers.