French aircraft manufacturer Aura Aero to open new manufacturing site in Florida

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — European aircraft manufacturer Aura Aero on Wednesday will formally unveil a 930 square-meter (10,000-square-foot) factory here, backed by state incentives and touting big plans for the future.

The Toulouse, France-based company will start with about two dozen employees completing final assembly of its two-seater Integral R trainer planes in the facility, a hangar about the size of a high school auditorium. By 2028, Aura plans to expand to an additional building in Daytona spanning 46,500 square meters (500,000 square feet). This large footprint would be required to assemble the Era, a planned 19-seat hybrid-electric passenger plane.

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Last year, the state of Florida announced a $200 million tiered incentive package for Aura, based on the number of jobs the company creates.

“I selected Florida because we need a plant in the U.S., because we want to sell there, and there is already a strong aerospace activity,” Jérémy Caussade, Aura’s founder and president, told me in an interview before the opening. He was referring to the nearby Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, NASA Kennedy Space Center and U.S. Air Force installations, including Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Sales in Europe began earlier this year, after the Integral received a type certificate from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency in December 2024. Caussade said by 2026, he expects FAA certification and U.S. sales of the small airplane to begin. Aura intends to sell a gas-powered version and an all-electric variant.

“The two-seater is such a great help to build the company, to build the trust with our customer and the authorities. Otherwise, to me, it’s almost impossible to jump directly to such a big thing like 19 seats as a new company,” Caussade said. “We are on the way to start building, probably next year, a bigger factory for the 19 seats. So, it’s a step-by-step approach.”

Founded in 2018, Aura has funding or financial support from several European Union initiatives aimed at green aviation technologies, including the European Innovation Fund, the French public investment bank Bpifrance, and EDF Group, a state-owned electricity company. This is notably different from the European electric aviation startups Lilium and Volocopter, which developed their aircraft with private money. Both filed for bankruptcy in late 2024 after failing to secure public investment, though Volocopter was later purchased by Diamond Aircraft, a subsidiary of the China-based Wanfeng Auto Holding Group.

For its electric propulsion, Aura selected the ENGINeUS electric motor from the Paris-based aerospace giant Safran.

The 19-seat Aura Era is planned to have a range of about 1,600 kilometers (900 nautical miles), which Caussade said is needed to provide regional service between cities.

“You would get a lot of benefits because the hybrid-electric is less polluting and less noisy,” he added.