NBAA-BACE Updates On The Bombardier Ecojet Project Bombardier has been continually working on their EcoJet Project. Here is the latest news regarding this program that Bombardier announced at the 2023 NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas, Nevada. The program has now entered its second phase and marking that new phase is the unveiling of a new much larger demonstrator model which scales up the testing. This new model is 18-feet wide making it considerably larger than the much smaller proving design. Although we are now seeing a photo of the new demonstrator, it has flown last year.
The 18-foot-wide prototype of Bombardier’s EcoJet research project has flown for the first time in 2022 and can fly autonomously. Bombardier’s Research and Technology team has started testing real life feasibility of their theoretical work back in 2017 with the first prototype, which had a wingspan of approximately 8 feet. While laying the foundation for more sustainable business jets, Bombardier will also leverage its EcoJet prototypes to continue creating incredible customer experiences.
Flight campaigns on scaled test vehicles allow the organization and its academic partners to explore the behavior of BWB designed vehicles in free flight. Comprised of several free-flight campaigns, the flight-testing program will be held over multiple years to generate increasingly precise data in real-world, representative environments. "Our engineers are eager to start working with the results yielded by this second phase of the flight test program," said Stephen McCullough, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Product Development. "Building on the significant data drawn from the initial flight-testing phase, and now leveraging a model twice as large as the first prototype, we can further refine our analysis. With each additional experimental stage, we are paving the way for more sustainable aircraft designs and new technologies.’" For more information: Bombardier Aerospace 400 Côte-Vertu Road West Dorval, Quebec H45 1Y9 Canada www.bombardier.com ***
