From the Flight Deck

Another step toward electric aviation reality was taken recently when U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy rode in one of BETA Technologies’ Alia eVTOL aircraft – the first transportation secretary to fly in such an aircraft.

On May 29, Duffy visited BETA’s facility in Burlington, Vermont, to take what he called a “historic flight into the future,” according to Flying magazine.

Duffy went up in a BETA Alia eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft. “This is the kind of innovation I love to see,” Duffy said in a BETA press release, “technology that’s going to fundamentally improve how people and products move.”

Sec. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy (left); Kyle Clark, BETA Technologies President and CEO; Nate Moyer, experimental test pilot. Courtesy photo

The folks at Shoreline Aviation know that message well. Shoreline, which manages Marshfield Municipal Airport for the Massachusetts South Shore town, worked closely with BETA over a few years, culminating in the installation of a high-speed BETA electric-aircraft charging station at the airport in 2023 – the first aircraft charging station in Massachusetts.

“This is the future,” Shoreline President Keith Douglass said at the time, “and we wanted to be part of that.”

That is something they’ve always done at Shoreline.

“We have electric vehicles, we have electric tugs, we have electric carts,” Douglass said. “Now with the charger here in the airport, we know there’s not a lot of planes here to charge – but we know that’s coming.”

The charging station at Marshfield is one of 50 that BETA has installed around the country, according to the Flying article. The company also installed two of BETA’s EV charging stations (level 2 and 3) in the airport parking lot for public use. This charging station project involved strong participation by Eversource and MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division.

One of the participants in Shoreline’s electric-aircraft charging station celebration in 2023 was an all-electric ALIA 250, BETA’s prototype conventional takeoff aircraft, which flew in for the event.

The final of eight stories chronicling the event that year celebrating the milestone step can be found here, with links to all the other stories in the series.

In March, BETA announced it had been selected by the Federal Aviation Administration as a launch participant in its first-ever eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP).

“A program designed to accelerate the safe deployment of electric and vertical flight in the U.S.,” BETA said in a press release, “BETA’s selection to participate in the eIPP signals its strong position to lead the industry in bringing the safe, reliable, and economic benefits of electric aviation to communities across the country.”

In the cover photo, Shoreline Aviation President Keith Douglass looks over the BETA Technologies all-electric ALIA 250, which had just flown into Marshfield Airport.