After a first flight in May 2024 another 26 flights were flown at Aeroporti di Puglia in Grottaglie (Italy), with our scaled version of a large passenger aircraft with distributed electric propulsion.
The dynamics of the aircraft was measured and two control algorithms using asymmetric thrust were tested. Part of the manoeuvres were flown with the remote human pilot in the ground station controlling the aircraft with control surfaces and through differential thrust (meaning the motors on the left and the right side have different rotation speed).
The project contributes to the objective of the Clean Sky 2 programme of the European Commission in which Airbus, ONERA, CIRA, TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, Orange Aerospace, and NLR collaborate.