Aura Aero ERA aircraft program issues tenders for fuselage design, airframe engineering

Aura Aero (Toulouse, France) launched the Electric Regional Aircraft (ERA) program in 2021, with the aim to help decarbonize air transport, starting with a 19-seat aircraft certifiable by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in the CS-23 category.

The ERA, with its hybrid-electric propulsion, will address the growing demand for air traffic — the planes currently servicing regional flights are mostly older generation, especially in terms of less-efficient propulsion and high fossil fuel consumption and emissions.

The market’s reaction has been encouraging, with 500 aircraft already pre-ordered. From December 2023 to March 2024, a vast program review enabled Aura Aero to validate maturity gate MG4, defining the ERA’s materials and systems. The aircraft is therefore passing two major milestones in its development.

First, Aura Aero has launched the first large calls for tender for work packages including fuselage design, airframe engineering services, turbogenerator, and primary flight control system actuators and inceptors. This step will enable the manufacturer to select the suppliers that will participate in this program. The first parts of the flight test aircraft are scheduled to be manufactured by the beginning of 2025.

Second, in pursuit of certification by European and U.S. aviation authorities, Aura Aero has signed a pre-application services contract (PAC) with the EASA. Prior to the certification process of the aircraft, this contract helps set the frame within which EASA will later certify the aircraft per the CS-23 category.

By committing to this PAC, in Category 2: “Introduction of a product with embodied innovative or disruptive technologies,” Aura Aero engages with EASA and will receive technical advice services, while helping the Authority draft the generic elements to set the foundations of the future formal product certification basis.

Engaging in an EASA PAC process will also assist Aura Aero in validating its disruptive technology choices for the ERA aircraft, including the avionic and fly-by-wire systems and hybrid-electric propulsion.

Aura Aero is already certified as an aircraft manufacturer from design to production, having obtained EASA PART 21G approval (manufacturing) in November 2021 and PART 21J approval (industrial design) in September 2023.

“Aura Aero is the first company to cooperate with EASA in the field of electric commuter aircraft,” claims Luc Tytgat, high representative to the EASA executive director. “We at EASA are convinced that general aviation and mid-Tier companies are good incubators for developing innovative solutions and that the lessons learned from this PAC will contribute to the decarbonization of air transport and the future employment of green technologies in aviation.”