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General Aviation 2.0

Redefining The Route To Market
For Innovative New Aircraft

A Fresh Approach

ETHER Helicopters has pioneered a reimagined approach to delivering and supporting safe, exciting luxury private aircraft ownership at an affordable price. We call it General Aviation 2.0.

General Aviation 2.0 (GA2.0) extends far beyond the aircraft. It is an end-to-end ownership experience delivering the aircraft you’ve always wanted and combining it with all the support you need to get the best out of private aviation.

Entirely customer focused, GA2.0 begins with our ground up, exhilarating modern aircraft design embodying all the features today’s pilots demand, while simultaneously meeting or exceeding the latest EASA and FAA airworthiness requirements. Beyond this, GA2.0 also provides an all new, safe, and fully supported ownership experience. These factors together ensure your new aircraft delivers unprecedentedly low operating costs and maintains a stable high resale value, making personal helicopter ownership more attainable than ever before.

  • General
    Aviation 2.0
  • Low operating
    Costs

Dual Role Approval Model

Light helicopter owners fall into two broad categories – private and commercial users. While an aircraft may meet performance requirements for both, private owners demand far more modern technology, greater luxury, frequent product refreshes, and notably different support compared to their commercial operator counterparts.

Our Dual Role Approval Model allows us to best serve the needs of both distinctly different userbases with two variants of the same aircraft.
ETHER-50 serves private owners while ETHER-80 focuses on commercial users. Both aircraft are essentially identical, each meeting the latest EASA and FAA certification standards for small/normal category rotorcraft and both entirely factory built in our world class American aerospace manufacturing facility.

ETHER-50 however is not sold with a type certificate. Instead, it receives an initial type approval from the USA CAA to the latest certification standards of EASA CS-27, meets FAA Part 27 and is provided to customers with an amateur-built airworthiness approval. Each aircraft is factory constructed during a two-week fully supported build course in the USA.

ETHER-50 Benefits

  • Factory-built Aircraft
  • Meets The Latest EASA And FAA Certified Standards
  • Greatly Enhanced Design And Safety Features
  • Modern Technology
  • Strong Residual Value
  • Lowest Possible Cost Of Ownership

Our Commercial Variant, ETHER-50, Is Offered With A Traditional Type Certificate, With The Initial Certification Being Provided By The Usa Caa And Subsequent Type Validations / Acceptances Following Around The World.

There Are Only Four Differences Between The ETHER-50 And The ETHER-80
  • Price
  • Time to market
  • Required owner participation in manufacture of ETHER-50
  • Private (ETHER-50) versus full commercial (ETHER-80) use

By fusing the best elements of the certification process with those of recreational aviation, GA2.0 makes owner-operators the focus of the general aviation industry and, together with ETHER-50, will trigger a long overdue renaissance in private aviation.

Certification VS Holistic Safety

  • Certification Vs Holistic Safety
  • How The Program Works
  • The Ideal Option For Private Owners

  • Certification does not make an aircraft any safer than one designed, manufactured, maintained, and operated in accordance with the certification standards. Certification simply means an aviation authority officially confirms the aircraft meets required airworthiness standards. In the case of privately operated aircraft, there is much more to delivering and operating a holistically safe aircraft than meeting certification requirements. The aircraft must meet the form, function, and safety needs of its end-users.

    Private owners are often inexperienced pilots, and their aircraft should focus on their needs – benign handling qualities, resilience to low-g conditions, excellent stability, high power reserves, realistic payload for user requirements, robust crashworthiness, and ease of operation with minimum pilot workload.

    The traditional approach to certification inhibits developing innovative new technologies and systems that meet these needs. Manufacturers turn to older, pre-approved components to minimise the cost, complexity, and timescales of certification. This unfortunately limits the ability to deliver ‘holistically safe’ aircraft.

    Every ETHER helicopter meets the latest EASA and FAA certification standards for normal category rotorcraft and is built in our USA CAA-approved factory. With ETHER-50, we fuse the highest levels of airworthiness from the latest certification standards with the GA-appropriate type approval process found in amateur-built aircraft. HC50, which is essentially the same aircraft, produced in the same approved factory, is offered to the market somewhat later, with a full type certificate enabling commercial use.

    The dual role approval model allows the innovative ETHER-50 to meet the highest possible safety standards while being brought to market faster and with lower overall costs, holistically improving the safety and affordability of all light helicopters.

  • Ownership of a ETHER-50 provides the high-performance, luxury aircraft you always wanted with the skills and knowledge you need to be a holistically safe independent owner-operator. Our approach intelligently fuses standards-meeting, factory-built aircraft with the crucial owner-operator training, education, and insight that can only be effectively delivered though involvement in the construction of your own aircraft.

    ETHER-50 not only signals a paradigm shift in aircraft design, but also in how we equip private pilots to be independent owner-operators.

  • For private owners, the ETHER-50 cost model is nothing short of revolutionary. Calendar depreciation is essentially eliminated with a long 5,000-hour, on-condition TBO and no 12-year aircraft and engine overhaul requirement. Hill’s commitment to low ongoing maintenance and insurance costs drive down the remaining fixed costs, allowing the majority of entry-level private helicopter owners to keep their aircraft to themselves and avoid the perils and uncertainty of leaseback.

ETHER-50
The Commercial Option

For those wishing to use their aircraft commercially, the ETHER-50 is the fully certified option and will be offered at a higher purchase price to support the costs of commercial use certification.

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