Electric and Hydrogen Aircraft: What Has Flown, What Is Certified

Updated September 18, 2026 · 14 min read

Short answer: exactly one electric aeroplane holds a type certificate anywhere in the world — the two-seat Pipistrel Velis Electro, certified by EASA on 10 June 2020 and used for pilot training. Nothing larger has followed it. The next certificate is most likely to go to Beta Technologies’ five-seat Alia CX300, which the company is targeting for FAA approval around the turn of 2026–27. Hydrogen is further back still: the FAA finalised the rules its first 600 kW hydrogen-electric engine must meet in March 2026, and ZeroAvia now expects to certify the fuel-cell system in 2027 with the full powertrain up to two years after that.

Last verified: 13 September 2026. Range and seat figures are manufacturer claims unless a regulator’s document is cited; no certification authority publishes range numbers.

Why the certified list is one aircraft long

Batteries are the reason, and the arithmetic is unforgiving. Jet fuel carries roughly 12,000 Wh per kilogram. A good current lithium-ion cell carries about 250–300 Wh/kg at pack level once structure, cooling and safety margin are included. Burning fuel also makes an aeroplane lighter as it flies; a battery weighs the same when it lands as when it took off, and the reserve you must still hold is dead weight for the whole flight.

That is why the certified aircraft is a two-seat trainer doing circuits, why the credible next step is a five-seat short-haul aircraft, and why every “electric airliner” on the horizon is a hybrid that carries a fuel-burning range extender.

Electric and hydrogen aircraft programmes, September 2026

What counts as a milestone here

This table deliberately excludes three things the sector reports as progress: concept renderings, order books, and flights by aircraft that are not built to a certifiable design. A conforming aircraft — one built to the design the regulator is being asked to approve — is the point at which flight testing starts to count toward a certificate. Before that, a flight proves the physics, not the paperwork.

It also separates hybrid from electric. The ES-30 is in the table because it is honest about carrying generators; an aircraft that burns fuel in cruise is not a zero-emission aircraft, whatever the brochure says, and its emissions belong in the same lifecycle accounting as any turboprop.

The three numbers that decide what flies next

• Pack-level specific energy. Roughly 250–300 Wh/kg today. Regional aviation at useful payload needs 400–500 Wh/kg at pack level, with the cycle life and safety behaviour to be certifiable, not just the headline cell figure from a laboratory.
• Reserve rules. An aeroplane must land with a legal reserve. In a battery aircraft that reserve is carried as mass for the entire flight, so it eats into range twice — once as weight, once as unusable energy.
• Charge turnaround. A regional aircraft earns money by flying several sectors a day. A battery aircraft that needs an hour on the ground between sectors has a different business model from one that needs fifteen minutes, regardless of range.

How does an aeroplane actually get an electric type certificate?

A type certificate is a regulator’s statement that a design meets the airworthiness code — not that one aircraft flew well on one day. That distinction explains most of the gap between press releases and the table above. The FAA runs the process in five stages, and a programme can sit inside a single stage for years.

What are the five certification stages, and where do electric programmes get stuck?

Two words in that table do most of the work. Conforming means the aircraft was built to the exact design being certified, with traceable parts; flights by a prototype that is not conforming demonstrate physics, not compliance. For-credit means the regulator accepts the test result toward the certificate, which usually requires its own pilots and its own instrumentation. A company can fly a thousand hours and have almost none of it count.

Why do electric aircraft need special conditions at all?

Because 14 CFR Part 23, the code for normal-category aeroplanes, assumes a combustion engine. It has rules for fuel tanks, carburettor ice and engine fire zones, and nothing for a 400-volt battery pack, a liquid-cooled inverter or a motor that produces full torque at zero rpm. Rather than rewrite the code for every applicant, the regulator publishes special conditions: aircraft-specific rules with the force of regulation. That is exactly what happened for the hydrogen-electric engine in the table above — the rule had to exist before the certificate could.

The European route is the same shape. EASA certified the Velis Electro against CS-23 plus electric-propulsion special conditions, which is why its 2020 announcement described the motor certificate and the aircraft certificate as separate events, three weeks apart.

Why do reserve rules cost an electric aircraft more than a turboprop?

Every aeroplane must land with fuel — or energy — still on board. Under 14 CFR 91.151 a VFR flight needs enough to reach the first point of intended landing and then fly 30 minutes in day conditions or 45 minutes at night at normal cruising speed. Under 14 CFR 91.167, an IFR flight needs enough to reach the destination, then the alternate, then fly another 45 minutes.

For a turboprop that reserve is fuel it never burns, and the aircraft gets lighter all flight as it burns the rest. For a battery aircraft the reserve is mass that is carried from brakes-off to touchdown, and it is subtracted from a total that was small to begin with. The result is that reserves eat a far larger share of an electric aircraft’s usable energy.

This is the single clearest reason the certified electric fleet is a day-VFR trainer. It is also why serious short-haul electric proposals are either hybrids that carry a generator for the reserve, or aircraft designed around airport pairs close enough that the alternate is minutes away rather than an hour.

How far can a battery aircraft actually fly?

Battery-electric range follows a simpler relationship than the fuel-burning Breguet equation, because the aircraft mass never changes:

Range = (specific energy × battery mass fraction × efficiency × lift-to-drag ratio) ÷ g

Specific energy is in watt-hours per kilogram at pack level. Battery mass fraction is the share of maximum take-off mass that is battery. Efficiency covers the inverter, motor and propeller together — about 0.80 to 0.85 for a well-designed electric powertrain, far better than the roughly 0.30 a piston engine manages. Lift-to-drag ratio is airframe quality: 12 to 14 for a light utility aeroplane, 17 to 19 for a clean regional design, above 20 only for gliders and very high-aspect-ratio concepts.

The calculator below applies that equation, then deducts a reserve so the number is an operational range rather than a brochure range.

Run today's numbers and the result matches the certified fleet: 270 Wh/kg, a 30% battery fraction and an L/D of 16 gives a still-air range in the low hundreds of kilometres, and roughly a third of that disappears into a day-VFR reserve. Now raise specific energy and watch what changes.

The gap between a cell figure and a pack figure matters more here than anywhere else in transport. A cell tested in a laboratory at 400 Wh/kg typically lands near 280-300 Wh/kg once the module structure, cooling plates, busbars, contactors and crash protection are counted — and aviation packs carry more of all four than a car does. Our electric aircraft battery technology guide works through which chemistries are closest to closing that gap.

How long does an electric aircraft sit on the ground between flights?

Turnaround time is the number that decides whether an electric aeroplane earns money. A turboprop refuels in minutes; a battery aircraft is limited by charge power and by how hard the pack can be charged without shortening its certified life.

Two consequences follow. First, the aircraft is only half the problem: the airport needs a grid connection sized like a small industrial site, which is why electric aircraft developers end up selling chargers as well as aeroplanes. Second, fast charging and long pack life pull against each other, and the regulator cares about the second one — a battery with a certified life limit is a scheduled replacement cost on every operator's books.

What does the energy for an electric flight cost?

Energy is the one line where electric aircraft win outright, and by a wide margin. The comparison below uses a one-hour flight in a light aircraft, US commercial electricity rates published by the EIA and typical avgas pricing; treat the absolute figures as illustrative and the ratio as the point.

That is why flight schools, not airlines, are the customer for the only certified electric aeroplane. A trainer flies short legs from the same field all day, never needs an alternate an hour away, and burns the one cost line where electricity is five to eight times cheaper. For the wider fuel picture, see our breakdown of sustainable aviation fuel and where it competes.

Which programmes have already failed, and what did they get wrong?

A tracker that only lists survivors overstates the odds. Several well-funded programmes in this space have stopped, and the failure patterns repeat.

• Running out of runway before certification. Certification costs years of spending with no revenue. Programmes that raised money against a demonstration flight, rather than against a certification plan, tended to hit the wall in stage 4 — the longest and most expensive stage.
• Betting on a battery that did not arrive. Several designs were sized around cell figures that were real in a laboratory and never became certifiable pack figures. When the pack came in 30% heavier, the payload went to zero.
• Building an aircraft for an infrastructure that did not exist. Hydrogen retrofit programmes in particular assumed airport-side liquid hydrogen supply that nobody had committed to fund.
• Confusing orders with revenue. Conditional order books in the hundreds of aircraft appeared in press releases and almost never converted into deposits large enough to fund certification.

The same patterns run through the air-taxi sector, where the money has been larger and the attrition just as sharp — our eVTOL certification tracker follows those programmes separately.

What should you watch for in the next twelve months?

Four events would genuinely move this table, in rough order of how much they would tell you:

1. A second type certificate for any electric aeroplane. One certificate in six years is a data point; two would be a trend, and would tell you the regulators have a repeatable process rather than a one-off.
2. For-credit flight testing with regulator pilots on a five-or-more-seat design. This is the step that separates a demonstration programme from a certification programme, and it is announced far less loudly than first flights.
3. A published pack-level specific energy above 350 Wh/kg with a certified cycle life. Cell announcements are routine; a pack figure with a life limit behind it is not.
4. An airport committing grid capacity for megawatt-class charging. Aircraft can be built faster than substations can be upgraded, and the second one is invisible until it becomes the constraint.

Everything else — renderings, letters of intent, conditional orders, first flights of non-conforming prototypes — is noise against those four. Our methodology page sets out how each row above is verified and what we refuse to count.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many electric aeroplanes are type certified today?

One: the two-seat Pipistrel Velis Electro, certified by EASA on 10 June 2020. No larger fully electric aeroplane holds a type certificate from any authority. Aircraft that have flown, taken orders or carried passengers on demonstration flights are not certified aircraft, and cannot be sold for ordinary commercial operations.

Is the Velis Electro certified in the United States?

It is not FAA type certified as a normal-category aeroplane. US operators fly it under other routes such as the light-sport or experimental categories, which carry their own operating limitations. An EASA type certificate does not transfer automatically; validation by the FAA is a separate process with its own timeline.

Why can an electric car go 500 km but an electric aeroplane cannot?

A car carries its battery at roughly 25-30% of vehicle mass and spends most of its energy overcoming rolling resistance and air drag at modest speed. An aeroplane must also hold itself up, which costs energy every second of flight, and it must land with a legal reserve still unused. The same pack that moves a car 500 km along a road moves a light aeroplane a few hundred kilometres through the air before reserves are deducted.

What does "conforming aircraft" mean in certification news?

It is an aircraft built to the exact design the regulator has been asked to approve, with parts traceable to approved drawings and processes. Flight testing on a conforming aircraft can count toward the certificate; testing on an earlier prototype generally cannot. The phrase is the clearest single signal that a programme has moved from engineering to certification.

Are hybrid-electric aircraft zero-emission?

No. A hybrid burns fuel in a generator, and those emissions belong in the same accounting as any turboprop's. Hybrids matter because they solve the reserve problem — the generator covers the legal reserve so the battery can be spent on the cruise — but the correct comparison is against an efficient conventional aircraft, not against zero. Our aviation emissions data puts those figures side by side.

How long do aircraft batteries last?

Certified aviation packs carry a life limit expressed in cycles or calendar time, whichever comes first, and they are replaced on that schedule regardless of how healthy they look. This is stricter than automotive practice, where a degraded pack simply loses range. Life limits are a recurring operating cost, and they are one reason the energy saving does not translate one-for-one into a lower hourly rate.

Will electric aircraft ever fly transatlantic routes?

Not on batteries under any chemistry now in development. A 6,000 km flight with reserves needs pack-level specific energy several times beyond even laboratory lithium-sulphur figures. Long-haul decarbonisation runs through fuels — sustainable aviation fuel now, possibly hydrogen later — while batteries serve the short-haul end where they are physically credible.

How often is this tracker updated?

Every row carries the date it was last verified, and the page is re-checked whenever a regulator publishes a certificate, a special condition or an airworthiness directive affecting one of these programmes. Where a figure is a manufacturer claim rather than a regulator's document, the table says so — no certification authority publishes range or seat-mile numbers.

Sources

• EASA — first type certification worldwide of a fully electric aircraft (Velis Electro, 10 June 2020)
• Aviation International News — Beta's Alia CX300 at Farnborough 2026
• Aviation International News — FAA finalises special conditions for ZeroAvia's ZA601 engine (effective 18 March 2026)
• ZeroAvia — Dornier 228 hydrogen-electric flight test campaign
• Eviation Alice — first flight record and programme history, summary with primary citations
• Heart Aerospace ES-30 — design, range and service-entry targets, Key.Aero

Related on ZeroCarbonDrive

• Electric aircraft explained: batteries, range and the physics
• eVTOL certification tracker: who is actually certified
• Hydrogen aviation explained
• Sustainable aviation fuel explained
• Aviation non-CO2 effects: contrails and climate

Written and edited by Muhammet Çay, Founder and Editor · LinkedIn · How we source and correct this site · Report an error

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