https://aviationweek.com/themes/custom/particle/dist/app-drupal/assets/awn-logo.svg
Skip to main content
  • Market Sector
    • Aerospace
    • Air Transport
    • MRO
    • Defense and Space
    • Business Aviation
  • Markets
    • Aerospace
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Connected Aerospace
      • Emerging Technologies
      • Manufacturing & Supply Chain
      • Advanced Air Mobility
      • Commercial Space
      • Sustainability
    • Air Transport
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Interiors & Connectivity
      • Airports & Networks
      • Airlines & Lessors
      • Safety, Ops & Regulation
      • Maintenance & Training
      • Sustainability
    • MRO
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Interiors & Connectivity
      • Emerging Technologies
      • Supply Chain
      • Safety, Ops & Regulation
      • Workforce & Training
      • Sustainability
    • Defense and Space
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Sensors & Electronic Warfare
      • Missile Defense & Weapons
      • Supply Chain
      • Budget, Policy & Operations
      • Space
      • Sustainability
    • Business Aviation
      • Aircraft & Propulsion
      • Interiors & Connectivity
      • Airports, FBOs & Suppliers
      • Flight Deck
      • Safety, Ops & Regulation
      • Maintenance & Training
      • Sustainability
  • Marketplace
  • Services
    • Services
      • Advertising
      • Marketing Services
      • Fleet, Data & APIs
      • Research & Consulting
      • Network and Route Planning
      • Marketplace
  • Store
    • Market Sector

      • Aerospace
      • Air Transport
      • MRO
      • Defense and Space
      • Business Aviation
    • Type View All Products
      • Intelligence Bundles
        • AWIN - Premium
        • AWIN - Aerospace and Defense
        • AWIN - Business Aviation
        • AWIN - Commercial Aviation
      • Market Briefings
        • Advanced Air Mobility Report - NEW!
        • Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
        • Aviation Daily
        • SpeedNews
        • The Weekly of Business Aviation
      • Directories
        • Air Charter Guide
        • Aviation Week Marketplace
        • Route Exchange
        • The Engine Yearbook
      • Data Services
        • AC-U-KWIK
        • Aircraft Bluebook
        • Airportdata.com
        • Airport Strategy and Marketing (ASM)
        • CAPA – Centre for Aviation
        • Fleet Discovery Civil
        • Fleet Discovery Military
        • Fleet & MRO Forecast
        • MRO Prospector
      • Publications
        • Air Transport World
        • Aviation Week & Space Technology
        • Aviation Week & Space Technology - Inside MRO
        • Business & Commercial Aviation
        • CAPA - Airline Leader
        • Routes magazine
        • ShowNews
      • Resources
        • Downloadable Reports
  • Events
    • Recent webinars
    • Events View All Events
      • MRO
        • MRO Americas
        • MRO Asia
        • MRO Australasia
        • MRO Baltics & Eastern Europe Region
        • MRO Europe
        • MRO Latin America
        • MRO Middle East
        • Military Aviation Logistics and Maintenance Symposium (MALMS)
        • Asia Aerospace Leadership Forum & MRO Asia-Pacific Awards
      • Commercial Aviation/A&D
        • A&D Mergers and Acquisitions
        • A&D Programs
        • A&D Manufacturing
        • A&D Raw Materials
        • A&D SupplyChain
        • A&D SupplyChain Europe
        • Advanced Air Mobility
        • Aero-Engines Americas
        • Aero-Engines Europe
        • Aero-Engines Asia-Pacific
        • Aerospace IT
        • Engine Leasing Trading & Finance Europe
        • Engine Leasing, Trading & Finance Americas
      • Air Transport
        • Routes Americas
        • Routes Europe
        • Routes World
        • ATW Airline Awards
        • CAPA Airline Leader Summit
        • CAPA Americas Aviation Summit
        • CAPA Latin America Aviation Summit
        • CAPA Australia Pacific Aviation Summit
        • CAPA Asia Aviation Summit & Sustainability Awards
        • CAPA World Aviation Outlook Summit
        • GAD Americas
        • GAD World
      • Aerospace and Defense
        • A&D Mergers and Acquisitions Conference (ADMA)
        • A&D Manufacturing Conference
        • Aerospace Raw Materials & Manufacturers Supply Chain Conference (RMC)
        • A&D Programs
      • Awards
        • Aviation Week 20 Twenties
        • Aviation Week Laureate Awards
        • Program Excellence Awards and Banquet
        • CAPA Asia Aviation Summit & Awards for Excellence
  • About
    • About Aviation Week Network
      • Our Story
      • Content and Data Team
      • Aviation Week & Space Technology 100-Year
    • Contact Us
      • Subscriber Services
      • Advertising, Marketing Services & List Rentals
      • Content Sales
      • Events
      • PR & Communications
      • Content Licensing and Reprints
      • FAQ
  • Log In
  • Register
  • My Account
    • Profile
    • Sign Out
  • AWIN Access
  • My cart
    Back to
  1. Business Aviation
  2. Aircraft & Propulsion

Share

Gallery: Overair’s Butterfly AAM Aircraft Takes Shape

Rich Piellisch February 08, 2022
Overair Butterfly scale

‘A Smaller, Cleaner Place’

Credit: Overair

Santa Ana, California-based Overair says it is “making the world a smaller, cleaner place for everyone” with its five-passenger, 100% electric, 100-mi.-range, tilt-rotor vertical take-off and landing Butterfly. The aircraft will be in the 7,000-lb. weight class and sized to operate from existing helipads with a 50 by-50 ft. touchdown and liftoff area.

Bristow's Butterfly design

Overair Partners With Bristow For Butterfly

Credit: Overair

Overair’s Butterfly program got a huge boost in December 2021 when the company entered a partnership with Bristow, a vertical lift operator with operations around the world. Bristow plans to buy 20-50 Butterfly aircraft. The company plans to help Overair with the design, performance parameters, certification, flight planning best practices and other areas, it says. The two will also explore commercial taxi flights in new and emerging markets in various high-density geographical locations.

Overair operations Santa Ana, California

Doubling Space In Orange County

Credit: Overair

Overair plans to expand its operations in Santa Ana, California, effectively doubling its workspace, with a total of more than 200,000 sq. ft. across two facilities. In the next three-to-five years, it plans to hire 1,000 employees, including aerostructure and propulsion systems engineers. Current employment totals more than 100. The company has received $25 million in Series A funding.

Overair's Cody Leuck and Lindsay Miller

Composite Propeller Blade Production

Credit: Overair

Overair claims a unique tooling method to process the composite propeller blades for Butterfly. Here Cody Leuck, Overair senior manufacturing engineer (left), and Lindsay Miller, lead airframe manufacturing engineer, reform a trailing edge mandrel in preparation for the lamination process.

The mandrel is rigid at room temperature, Overair says, allowing for the completion of lamination. It then softens at higher temperatures, allowing the autoclave to do its task of consolidating the carbon fiber materials. Following curing, the mandrels are extracted from the blade while still warm.

Overair says that its specially tooling technique makes the co-curing of the geometrically complicated blade structure possible.

Overair’s autoclave

Overair Autoclave For Butterfly Propellers

Credit: Overair

Overair’s existing 4 ft.-by-14 ft.-autoclave is sized for curing Butterfly propeller blades. Larger on-site autoclaves will be used to cure Butterfly’s more sizable airframe components.

Overair technician Manny Jimenez

Laser Projection For Repeatable Ply Placement

Credit: Overair

Overair employs laser projection technology to support repeatable composite parts manufacturing. A 3D virtual laser template is projected onto molds, showing the operator precisely where to place the next material ply. Here, Overair technician Manny Jimenez laminates the center spar of a carbon fiber propeller blade.

Overair technicians Danny Silva and Andrew Iniguez

Butterfly Blade Final Assembly

Credit: Overair

Final assembly for Butterfly prototype propeller blades. The main blades are a single piece and co-cured for stiffness and strength. Replaceable blade tips are manufactured separately and bonded in place. Overair technicians Danny Silva and Andrew Iniguez are seen here using a precision placement fixture.

Overair Butterfly composite propeller blade

Butterfly Propeller Testing

Credit: Overair

Overair says it uses a “building block” approach to physical structure testing. This results in simpler and less expensive testing earlier in the program to prepare for the larger, more complicated tests that follow. Here, a composite propeller blade is being statically tested to measure mass, stiffness and minimum strength and compared to engineering team prediction models. The company will then confirm that the blade meets design requirements and will function as intended before it is integrated into a propeller hub.

Overair tests Butterfly’s 20-ft. dia. propellers on a 50,000-lb. testbed truck

Prop Testing In The Desert

Credit: Overair

Overair tests Butterfly’s propulsion system, which features 20-ft. diameter propellers, each with a trio of individually controlled blades, on a 50,000-lb. testbed truck. Trials are underway in the Southern California desert, “an environment that simulates some of the most demanding aerodynamic conditions anticipated in real-world operations.” There the blades and hub components are subjected to forces they will experience during flight operations.

Overair prototypes

The Overair Butterfly Machine Shop

Credit: Overair

Overair has its own Computer Numerical Control machine shop for quick-turn prototyping and the precision aerospace quality needed for development, it says.

Overair Program manager Jim Orbon at NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas 2021

A Decade Of Experience In Vertical Lift

Credit: Rich Piellisch

Program manager Jim Orbon notched more than a decade of experience at Sikorsky before joining Overair and taking over as Butterfly’s program leader in August 2020. Here, Orbon is representing Overair at the National Business Aviation Association’s NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas in 2021.

Previous
Next

Southern California’s Overair is developing Butterfly, a 100% electric Advanced Air Mobility aircraft aimed primarily at commercial air taxi operations. The five-passenger AAM craft is to make its first flight in 2023 with FAA certification planned for 2025 and entry-into-service in 2026.

Rich Piellisch

Rich Piellisch has been covering industry segments and issues for Aviation Week since the late 1980s with an emphasis on Who Is Selling What to Whom…

Aviation Week Intelligence Network
Monitor the market and connect your business to the people, programs and proprietary data driving the Business Aviation market - only available with AWIN.

BAV_AWIN_270_thumb

Stay Connected.
Stay Informed
Grow Your Business.

Learn How

Follow us on

Markets

  • Aerospace
  • Air Transport
  • MRO
  • Defense and Space
  • Business Aviation

Products

  • AWIN Intelligence Bundles
  • Market Briefings
  • Publications
  • Data Services
  • Directories
  • Resources

Contact Us

  • Subscriber Services
  • Advertising, Marketing Services & List Rentals
  • Content Sales
  • Events
  • PR & Communications
  • Content Licensing and Reprints
  • FAQ

Other Resources

  • Aviation Week Marketplace
  • Knowledge Center
  • Newsletters
  • ShowNews
  • Advertising - Media Kits
Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. Informa Markets, a trading division of Informa PLC.
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms of Use