Sinclair expects electric plane early next year

Jeffrey Miller, Sinclair’s senior vice president of workforce development and consulting, said the college expects to take possession of the craft in the first quarter of 2026.

After Sen. Jon Husted’s recent visit to Sinclair, Johnson showed visitors a model of the aircraft — the Beta Technologies’ ALIA CTOL (Conventional Takeoff and Landing Aircraft) — that he believes could be delivered in several months.

Credit: Brian Jenkins

Credit: Brian Jenkins

“This is one of the most sophisticated aircraft of its kind in the world,” Johnson said. “It’s totally electric.”

Sinclair already owns a full flight simulator of the craft’s cockpit, located at Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport, the only simulator of the craft in existence, expect for one the company itself possesses, Johnson said.

“This is an extension now of Sinclair’s 15 years of working in UAS (unmanned aerial systems),” Johnson said. “This is now advanced air mobility. So where we had some 300 to 400 aircraft (drones) that you could carry — a lot of our drones you could carry — we have now moved into drones that will carry you."

Sinclair first announced in May that it had purchased one of Beta’s aircraft, as well as a flight simulator, to be stationed in Springfield, home to the National Advanced Air Mobility Air Center of Excellence.

The package — plane and simulator — cost Sinclair more than $2.5 million, officials said in May, saying Sinclair used $2 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and $500,000 of state capital funds, supplemented by Sinclair’s funds.

The first students using the plane should be professional pilots looking to step into the world of advanced air mobility, Miller said.

“We’re also working on the maintenance technician side to try to develop programs that serve all manufacturers,” Miller said, adding: “As we did with UAS, we’re kind of ahead of the curve on this.”

The ALIA CTOL uses a runway to take off and land as a conventional plane would.

A message seeking comment was left with BETA’s press office.

Beta recently delivered its first eCTOL aircraft to Norway for use in test trials, notching the startup’s first customer delivery, Aviation Week recently reported.