Site visit: Inside the plant where BETA is building its electric aircraft

Company targeting end of 2026 for certification of conventional-takeoff-and-landing variant

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — The brightly lit manufacturing floor in front of me hummed with the sounds of machinery and worker activity. The focus of all this attention? Various yellow-green-coated aluminum and dark gray carbon fiber composite components that will, once assembled, form three electric aircraft.

This is the production facility of BETA Technologies, a building roughly three times the size of the White House that the Vermont company opened in 2023 near its headquarters here, adjacent to Burlington International Airport. I’ve traveled up from Florida to see BETA’s production process for myself and speak to executives about the company’s progress toward achieving FAA type certification and beginning commercial operations within a couple years with its ALIA electric aircraft.

“About 80% of our airframe is composite,” Sean Donovan, BETA’s chief operating officer, tells me as we walk. “We kind of mix and match aluminum versus composite based on a variety of reasons.” Two of the largest pieces I see are fuselage frames, curved structures reminiscent of ribcages, upon which technicians are securing the outer carbon fiber skins with rivets and other fasteners.

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Of the three planes currently under construction, two of them are CX300s, the conventional-takeoff-and-landing variant that BETA began developing several years ago in parallel with the vertical-lift design, the A250. Like many of the companies developing relatively small electric aircraft for passenger and cargo transport, BETA originally envisioned beginning operations with its vertical-lift design but changed course in 2023, announcing that it would prioritize certification of the CX300.

The reasoning is straightforward, BETA’s chief revenue officer Shawn Hall tells me after my tour of the production floor. As I’ve previously reported, the A250 and CX300 designs have nearly identical airframes, except for the booms on top of the A250 that are “a little bit thicker and longer” to hold the four propellers required for vertical takeoff and landing, Hall says. That configuration means the A250 falls under FAA’s still-emerging process for powered-lift designs, whereas the CX300 can be treated like a conventional airplane and certified under today’s Part 23 rules for general aviation aircraft.

“But the aircraft are designed to be as similar as absolutely possible. And it makes sense from a training perspective, from a manufacturing perspective, from a certification perspective,” he says.

Hall says that BETA expects to receive the CX300’s type certificate by the end of 2026, and the one for the A250 “soon after.”

Even before receiving this type certificate, however, BETA plans to deliver two CX300s to customers later this year for flight tests — Air New Zealand and Bristow Group, the Houston-based helicopter operator. Those flights in New Zealand and Norway will be permitted under versions of the FAA special air worthiness certificate that BETA received for its U.S. tests, which the agency classifies as experimental research and training flight.

The fuselage of the Air New Zealand aircraft was on the production floor during my visit, its aluminum skin signed in black marker by the airline’s employees who visited the plant last year. ANZ intends to use ALIA aircraft for, among other purposes, delivering mail between the North and South Island. The airline has ordered three CX300s, with an option for 20 more.

This initial focus on CX300 cargo flights is part of what Hall described as BETA’s “crawl, walk, run” strategy, in contrast to other electric aircraft developers who plan to begin with relatively short passenger flights in metropolitan and urban areas.

“I think just from a consumer adoption perspective, cargo flying around is easier for most people to wrap their head around,” Hall says, and BETA expects those flights will increase customer demand for future passenger aircraft.

The production facility was built with high demand in mind. While there was plenty of open space today with only the three aircraft in assembly, BETA’s long-term goal is to churn out 300 ALIAs per year, rolling them out the large doors at the far end of the factory floor as they’re completed onto a tarmac at Burlington International Airport. As I step outside those doors, I see the distant horizon, dominated by the Green and Adirondack mountains.

And BETA has room to grow: This parcel of land would allow the facility to be doubled in size if need be. It’s powered by solar panels and geothermal wells to avoid reliance on fossil fuel for power, according to the company.

Also housed in this building are the assembly lines for BETA’s battery products: the lithium-ion battery packs for ALIAs, plus the Charge Cube stations that BETA has installed at at least 20 airports in the northeastern and southern U.S.

ALIAs are designed to fly roughly 500 kilometers under battery power depending on conditions, but BETA is also building and testing an add-on gas generator module that could be installed in the cargo hold to extend the range up to 5,150 km. Interest in such hybrid propulsion has increased lately, largely driven by the U.S. armed services.

“It’s a very clear demand signal, especially from the military,” Hall says.

And speaking of demand, I asked Hall if BETA has any business plans in the Middle East, given the announcements by California-based Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation that their first passenger flights in the United Arab Emirates could take place as soon as this year.

This is all he’ll say: “I think the safest way to put this is, we continue to have customer conversations globally. So, continue to watch for announcements about that.”

Opener photo: A CX300 charging on the tarmac outside the company’s manufacturing and assembly plant. Credit: Paul Brinkmann