In late August 2020, Otto Aviation introduced its Celera 500L as “the most fuel-efficient commercially viable passenger aircraft in the world.”
Aren’t press releases great?
And yet, what made this announcement unique, in my opinion, was the fact this full-scale prototype has already completed 31 test flights.
Why is that special? Too often we read about what a company plans to do, not what it has done. That checks a big box for me.
Many times over the past few years I’ve wondered what the Wright brothers would’ve designed as the original Wright Flyer if they’d possessed the knowledge and technology we have today.
Would it look like the Celera 500L? Perhaps.
But one thing is certain, the critics would be just as ravenous.
Case in point, the often commenting gbigs states on our original story, “Another chase for the $20m business jet market. Not much use to non billionaires.”
And yet, when I read through Otto Aviation’s brochureware website, I see the target for this aircraft is clearly commercial (charter) aviation. I believe it to be the shorter distance variety. That is not the “business jet market.”
Cary Alburn comments “Should be renamed the Hyperbole.”
“And, the takeoff roll is only 300 feet,” adds Jim Mindy.
Will asks a more operational question: “How do you see out of the front of this airplane? Seems like there is limited forward and downward vision.”
Over at AVweb the cynicism piles on quickly.
“Laminar, shlaminar: The Celera 500L is essentially a Zeppelin with wings,” claims Dennis R. “The design predates the Wright brothers by three decades, and was patented prior to 1900. Nothing wrong with that, but let’s not get carried away either. There’s nothing novel or revolutionary about reinventing the blimp. Let’s just hope it doesn’t meet the same fate as the Hindenburg in 1937.”
One of the stronger negative comments came from John Schubert. He posted to both AVweb (as John S.) and Boldmethod. “I thought about this a few days, and came back ticked off. This ‘airplane’ is vaporware. Let us not pretend otherwise. Why would they go to the trouble of making the vaporware? Because there are many naive investors with many millions. Family money, oil money, etc. I have seen money plundered from naive investors in my own work experience. A ‘news article’ helps them dupe prospective investors.” The comment continues for some length.
And yet, not all comments are hateful and negative.
Len B. at AVweb says, “Personally, I think the world is still flat. No sense in trying to say the world is round. Wake up naysayers — we got where we are with daydreamers pushing the envelope.”
OK, he used sarcasm, but still as positive a comment as I’ve read.
Jim K exclaims, “Well done! More clean sheet airplane designs with numbers like this or that aspire to numbers like this are what we all need.”
And Ken S. states, “Wow! Can’t believe all the negativity! Personally I think it’s encouraging there are aviation entrepreneurs out there willing to do what aviation pioneers have done since the beginning … hanging it out there, pushing the edge of the envelope.”
Back at General Aviation News, Tony puts on his chamber of commerce hat and says, “Awesome aircraft. Bring it to Albuquerque, we’ll build it. 300 days of sunshine and dry.”
I’ve never been objective when it comes to aviation. I’m a full throated proponent. I suppose those who are critical of the Celera 500L believe their thoughts are realistic. Perhaps.
But I’ll stick with cheering on the likes of Otto Aviation and its Celera 500L. While I’m certain they’ll have a few setbacks, as long as they move forward, that’s a victory. And I hope they do.
Onward.
If they accomplished 31 test flights why would they not publish the results. Only If the results were way short of expectations which would negatively effect investments in the project.
I am not a pilot but a big fan of aviation technology and subscribe to most of the aviation magazines. I would be incredibly pleased if the Celera 500 eventually met it’s projected goals, but I am skeptical because with over 30 test flights and no performance data has been published. I am afraid that the end result will be a pretty good airplane but nothing close to the projected performance.
Trump’s plan to put the coal mines back in business is going away with him. I just read that electricity produced with renewable energy has surpassed that with coal fired generation. Natural gas, which the U.S. is exporting, is replacing coal fired steam plants. Even nuclear technology is planning on down sizing the plants and lowering the cost of production. Electric powered GA and experimental airplanes are flying with enough capacity to cover most recreational flying and training. You don’t have to like it but change is taking place. Continental and Lycoming technology is 75 years old, and expensive, along with the system established to maintain it. Think of it. No more fouled plugs, water in the fuel, oil changes, 2000 hr. TBO, and lower operating costs. I’m and old optimist. I hope I live long enough to see it fulfilled.
My name is Tim.My brother and I had the honor of working for Bill Otto in the mid-eighties when this idea was first introduced in a small shop in Anaheim California. We started building the wing Spar molds propeller molds and vacuum Chambers. I knew Bill Otto personally from that brief time in my working career.
My brother Tom worked for Bill a lot lot longer and built the first scale model desktop mockup of this Plane in the mid-eighties. For me to see it now coming to fruition makes me extremely happy knowing that Bill’s life-long work is a reality and the plane is doing everything he said it would way back then.
There’s a saying in science; Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. When the Celera’s specs are independently confirmed, I’ll believe them. Until then skepticism is a completely reasonable reaction.
People told Elon that you can’t land an orbital class rocket and that electric cars are slow.
I should be able to fly this with a single engine land license
I think you’re confusing criticism with abject realism, Ben. Aviators CAN be harsh critics but — more often than not — have a firm basis rooted in real world experience for their skepticism cum negativity.
Since the Wright Bros., the sides of runways have been littered with hoards of better ideas that were gonna be the next best whatever for aviation as we know it. Aviators have become weary of same and are quite outspoken in their disbelief as a result. The Tri-plane was gonna save the Red Baron in WWI, Jim Bede was gonna put a BD-5 in every garage for $1,950 in 1971, and friction-stir welding was going to bring the cost of manufacturing down on the Eclipse jet in the early 2000’s. How’d those ideas work out?
I went back and re-read the original article and comments. I’ll give Otto credit that they’ve actually built and flown something akin to a final design AND that they’ve garnered seven patents as opposed to computer based videos. But some of their specific claims and glorified comments are not believable ergo a bit hard to swallow. The “skepticism” light goes off immediately. Show me the data.
E.G., “The six-person aircraft has a maximum cruise speed of 450 miles per hour, a range of over 4,500 miles, and an “astounding” fuel economy of 18 to 25 miles per gallon.” That — in and of itself — is a step too far. So they parlay that claim and go on to say, “The dramatic reduction in fuel consumption makes the Celera 500L the most environmentally friendly airplane in its class and presents a major leap forward in the effort to develop a zero-emission air transportation system.” Oh really. What’re they gonna do … put a giant electric motor in the thing next and then claim it has zero emissions. Even if they could, all they’d do is move the point of emissions to the power plant instead at the point of use. I’d call that obfuscation using the buzz words ‘zero emissions’. See the problem here? Why don’t they go all the way and claim they’ll rotate the wing and have a UAM version of it that can land atop tall buildings in a single bound? That’d cover all the bases and make the flying car crowd happy, too.
Climbing Mount Reality isn’t easy and begins with baby steps. OK already … I get it. But when you start trying to tell me that a two year old that just learned to walk is going to run the Boston Marathon next year because you designed some “innovative” shoes for them … the red lights come on. I wish them well but … make sure your litter is fully off the runway if it doesn’t work out, Mr. Otto.
Saaaay … now that I look at the thing sideways, it looks suspiciously like a BD-5 or a Cirrus VK-30 fuselage profile. Not much innovation in that.
Very well said. It is doing better than the Raptor canard. It’s being developed for years, and doesn’t seem any closer to getting off the ground now, than when he first started.
I see that the Raptor prototype just crashed and will not be pursued with the same plane but an entirely new design. I wonder if that was not a planned crash to exit a project that was incredibly short of projections
Of course there was nothing “NEW” in the DC-3 either,but it revolutionized an industry.
I’m getting tired of hearing the comment about electric power just transferring the pollution from an internal combustion engine to a power plant. Wouldn’t it be better to have the pollution producing equipment in one place so the pollution can be better managed instead of millions of cars?
I agree. Internal combustion pollution is burning and wasting hydrocarbons. They are more in demand for plastics and whatever. Second, these statements always assume the power plant’s burn hydrocarbons and have the same inefficiency. There are Zero Emission powerplants. Look at Iceland. Nuclear plants, Solar plants, Wind Farms, hydro-electric, not every power plant burns coal or hydrocarbons. Yes, I would rather have electric planes and pull the electricity from a more efficient source.
Depends on how they’re producing the power. A Chinese coal plant, with no oversight, and not much more than a chimney for pollution control or a Candu nuclear plant, producing millions of watts of clean energy for decades, leaving only a few hundred pounds of ash at refueling – gues which we have more of in the world today?
In Kalyfornya (where I lived for 30 years), there are places where there are gigantic windmill farms as far as the eye can see … around Mojave and Palm Springs and maybe now other places? All that “green” electric power and they have rolling brownouts and blackouts now. In Oshkosh near the airport, Tesla has a Supercharging station for their cars. I often see people sitting there waiting for their car to charge up so they can get someplace. I didn’t know that if you drive a Tesla a long distance, you have to “tell” the car where you want to go and then the car determines the best route so it can find charging stations. In a rural area to the west where I summer, if an electric car is involved in a crash, the VFD has orders to get the humans out and let the cars burn. Our electric grid is deteriorating, there isn’t infinite amount excess capacity to allow everyone to draw from it and yet the electric crowd thinks using electric everything is the way to go. I’ll skip over the Solyndra debacle for now …
Electric HAS a place … in washing machines, refrigerators and TV sets but not in devices meant for serious transportation purposes. When someone figures out how to box up Unobtanium and the energy density reaches a point where it’s usable … THEN it’ll work.
And now Airbus wants to build airliners that run on hydrogen. I guess they never heard of the Hindenburg or how inefficient it is to generate hydrogen?
1. The Wright Brothers had to do NEW science and engineering, and they did it enormously well. At the Aerospace Museum of California I often cite inventing propellers for use in air and making them at least 80% efficient on the 1903 Flyer, that’s very close to the current state of the art for props. They also invented history’s first wind tunnel… and much more.
2. From aerodynamics, I don’t see how the fat fuselage can reduce drag: It’ s cross-sectional area necessarily displaces the corresponding air and it’s too long to keep the fuselage boundary layer from tripping into turbulent flow. At least the wings, with high aspect ratio, would be efficient and can use a laminar flow airfoil.
3. My nominations for most refined aerodynamic design: Sailplanes for best L/D, F-104s for overall high speed (supersonic) optimization. It’s not an aerodynamic coincidence that F-104s and the X-15s had a strong resemlance — I talk about that a lot at the Aerospace Museum of California, where we have the F-104B that was NASA 819.
Ben, you aren’t going to get many positive comments about aviation or anything else in this day and age. I’ll leave it to our PhD Sociologists to explain why.
Shades of Bill Lear, who famously replied to his critics: “Don’t tell ME it can’t be done”.
Speaking of Bill Lear: This design reminds me of the Lear fan. The gearbox was one of the greatest challenges of that program.
There’s nothing wrong with the concept. Making more efficient aircraft will require changing some peoples minds on what an aircraft should look like. Businesses need capital to run, and marketing generates capital. Published performance numbers would go a long way to silencing the critics though. People are still trying to make a flying car (Terafugia) which has failed to be financially viable at every attempt. This at least has the merit of addressing real issues and an existing market.
Ben,
Since they’ve made a number of test flights, it would be useful, and more believable, if they would publish the actual performance data. Their website has some nice, scrolling promotional statements, but no performance data.
It looks to be a promising design, sort of a single engine Piaggio Avanti, but with a V12 diesel.
Also, note that Molt Taylor’s Mini-imp , pusher, cruises at 200 mph on 100 hp, from an O-200.!