The only way is up: how VTOL flight is being re-shaped by players old and new

‘You wouldn’t be able to sell a Ford Cortina as a daily car today and yet that’s what the buyer of a helicopter is expected to do. There’s been no significant advance in helicopter design since the 1970s,’ insists Jason Hill.

An engineer and pilot, formerly of Westland Helicopters and now founder of Hill Helicopters, Hill aims to put this situation right with its HX50. The first tests of its engine will take place this May; it will be the first, UK-built jet engine for a helicopter since the 1960s. First test flights are due at the end of the year.

The HX50 promises to radically change the helicopter market. ‘The brief was to provide a helicopter equivalent of a supercar, marketed to the same audience, one in which there is, in effect, no competition,’ explains Hill. This, he argues, is a consequence of helicopter manufacturers being sufficiently disconnected from what the market wants. As a result, demand has dropped and the costs and effort required to develop a new model seem ever more dissuasively high. ‘It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy,’ says Hill.

The HX50 has several missions. First, the design is intended to lower the technical bar required to flying a helicopter – it’s designed for relatively inexperienced owner-operators. Auto-pilot and iPad-based plug-and-play satnav are standard (most helicopters have to be retrofitted for auto-pilot), along with a digital cockpit that greatly reduces the pilot’s workload.

In terms of form factor, it hits a particular sweet spot, with a capacity of five 95kg passengers and their luggage, along with fuel for a three-hour flight at 160mph. That’s a considerable advantage over making the same journey by road. Hill reckons there’s no other aircraft able to offer these capabilities, especially at the proposed price point of £675,000 – a quarter of that of, say, a Bell 505 of similar spec.

Finally, and importantly for Hill, ‘it has to be gorgeous.’ The HX50 is curvy and organic, a unified form with integrated tail rotor and fixed skids. Retractable undercarriage is also available, for an added cost.

‘Private owners don’t need a helicopter, so you have to make them really want one, as you might a Ferrari or an Aston Martin,’ Hill adds. ‘A helicopter has to exude sophistication while also being timeless, since helicopters tend to be in service a long time’.

It’s a sales pitch that seems to be working; according to Hill, by pre-orders - now standing at 1,458, over 70 countries – the HX50 is the world’s most successful aircraft ever, with 80% of sales going to customers looking to replace the helicopter they already have.

But it’s not just Hill looking to introduce a new era for helicopters – if they can still be called that: the future may lean into the idea of a helicopter/fixed wing aircraft hybrid. This spring Bell Textron, together with DARPA, completed the design review of its Sprint X-76 aircraft and now enters the building phase of what aims to offer the speed of an aircraft that needs a runway – in this case around 460mph – and the flexibility of a slower helicopter.

The Sprint – standing for SPeed and Runway Independent Technologies – does this by having foldaway rotors at the end of each wingtip. This HSVTOL craft - High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (HSVTOL) – ostensibly has special military operations in mind, should it pass flight testing in 2028, and might result in a purely autonomous vehicle.

Whatever happens, it’s a long road to civilian use; the current Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey entered military service in 2007, 19 years after the programme was initiated; a proposed civilian variant, the Leonardo AW609, is still in development.

A slightly less unconventional approach is being taken by Airbus Helicopters’ Racer aircraft, which looks akin to a helicopter that’s also been given wings with rotors. Again, the intention of the hybrid design – which has so far undergone an initial 50 hours of flight-testing, with another 150 in the pipeline between now and the end of next year – is an aircraft with VTOL capabilities, but which is also 1.5 times faster than a conventional helicopter, with a cruise speed around 273mph.

Given the extremely reduced drag of its design, the Racer also claims to be 25% more fuel efficient, with fewer parts – it has no tail rotor, for instance – reducing maintenance costs. Since the Racer has been found to still fly fast and economically on one of its two engines, next month will also see testing of the first ‘sleep mode’ system for a helicopter engine – akin to the start-stop system found in modern cars.

‘The helicopter formula has not evolved drastically for decades, even as the technology [used in helicopters] has advanced – the likes of different shaped rotor blades to reduce noise, for example,’ explains Brice Makinadjian, chief engineer of the Racer project. ‘Up until now there wasn’t the context in which to develop a technology [like the Racer’s best of both worlds hybrid] but that has changed due to partnerships [it’s funded by a public-private collaboration between the European Commission and 40 companies across the European aeronautics and other industries] and the talent that has brought’.

Makinadjian says that military pilots have flown the Racer and they’ve been impressed by its capacity to climb at double the rate of a more conventional helicopter. He expects the production aircraft - assuming the Racer gets that far - to be ideal for search and rescue operations and city to city transport, carrying some 10 passengers. But it’s testament, he adds, emphasising that ‘if you don’t innovate, you die, and that’s not just true of helicopters - who would have imagined 15 years ago that the electric car would become so well developed?’

Others are taking a more idiosyncratic, personal approach, eschewing the traditional complexity of a conventional helicopter in favour of multiple, electrically powered engines. In March this year, Doroni Aerospace - designers of a two seater VTOL craft powered by ducted fans for up to 40 minutes flight time - unveiled a full-scale showroom model of the H1-X, with flight-testing yet to come; orders are now being taken for the Pivotal Helix, a single-seat electric VTOL aircraft with 30 minutes of flight time between charges, and which in the US doesn’t require a pilot’s license to operate.

The four person Aska A5, also an electric VTOL craft and now in production, pioneers a folding rotor design that also allows it to be considered a street legal car. Whilst the giant aviation conglomerates, buoyed by deep-pocketed military contracts, work on well-funded, large-scale solutions, smaller companies are finally getting beyond the concept phase. All this promises to put the future of VTOL flight in a new light.

Hill HX50, more information at HillHelicopters.com, @HillHeli

Bellflight.com, Airbus.com, Doroni.io, Pivotal.aero, AskaFly.com