Electra is putting $850 million into its first aircraft factory, and it picked Springfield, Ohio to build the EL9 Ultra Short, its nine-passenger hybrid-electric plane that can take off in as little as 150 feet.
The plant will eventually build up to 800 aircraft a year and create nearly 2,000 jobs, the company said Tuesday. That’s a big commitment for a plane that hasn’t flown yet.
A factory before the first flight
The EL9 is still in development. Electra has submitted the aircraft to the FAA for Part 23 type certification and expects a first flight in late 2027 or early 2028. The FAA recently closed the G-1 Issue Paper, which formally sets the certification basis for the plane.
So the $850 million factory is a bet placed well ahead of the aircraft proving itself in the air. Design work starts now, and construction of the 96-acre facility begins next year.
The first phase will support up to 400 aircraft a year. A second phase doubles that to 800. The site sits at AirPark Ohio, next to Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport, and Electra says it beat out more than 140 other locations in a year-long search.
Springfield wasn’t a random pick. The airport is home to the National Advanced Air Mobility Center of Excellence and SkyVision, an FAA-approved ground-based detect-and-avoid system that lets companies run beyond-visual-line-of-sight flight testing in open airspace. It’s also close to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Air Force Research Laboratory, one of the densest concentrations of aerospace talent in the country.
“This agreement is the moment that our vision moves from demonstration into reality,” said Electra CEO Marc Allen. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine called the nearly 2,000 jobs “transformative for Clark County.”
What the EL9 actually is
The EL9 isn’t an eVTOL. It’s a fixed-wing plane that uses “blown lift” — a row of electric propellers along the wing’s leading edge blowing air over oversized flaps — to take off and land in as little as 150 feet. We watched the smaller EL2 demonstrator pull off that trick last year.
The hybrid part is what gives it range. A Safran TG600 turbogenerator charges the battery and feeds the motors, so the EL9 doesn’t depend on a battery breakthrough to fly useful distances. Electra and Safran signed a life-of-program deal for the TG600 this month, with an initial order of 250 units.
Electra claims the EL9 offers 2.5 times the payload and 10 times the range of helicopters and eVTOLs, at 70% lower operating cost. It calls the concept “Direct Aviation,” short point-to-point hops from parking lots, barges, and sports fields instead of airports.
The eVTOL crowd is chasing a different market
While Joby and Archer race to launch battery-powered air taxis, Electra is going after regional trips of 50 to 250 miles with a bigger plane and, it argues, far less certification risk. Part 23 is an established path for small fixed-wing aircraft, not the new rulebook eVTOL makers are still helping the FAA write. Joby is expanding its own production, but on a fundamentally different aircraft.
The order book is Electra’s strongest card. The company reported $9 billion in pre-orders and more than 2,000 aircraft reservations last year, and now counts over 2,200 letters of intent from 60-plus commercial customers, plus the US Air Force, Army, Navy, and NASA. Bristow Group has already locked in the first delivery slot with a non-refundable deposit.
Money hasn’t been the problem either. Electra raised a $115 million Series B in 2025 led by Prysm Capital, and its backers include Honeywell, Safran, and Lockheed Martin Ventures, which first invested back in 2022. In May, Electra’s own market study estimated that 50-to-250-mile trips will need 12,000 to 16,000 aircraft between 2030 and 2040.
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