Overview
- The NGCTR-TD completed a brief hovering maiden sortie on December 19, 2025 at Leonardo’s Cascina Costa site, flown by test pilot Gianfranco Cito.
- The sortie opens a progressive flight-test program expected to build toward roughly 200 flight hours with stepwise envelope expansion and transition testing.
- Developed under the Clean Sky 2 framework, the effort involves more than 85 organizations across 15 countries with about €116 million in EU funding and over 20 patents reported.
- The demonstrator uses an AW609 fuselage, GE CT7 engines, fixed-engine nacelles with a split-gearbox system, and new wing, tail, and modular flight-control architectures.
- Targets include a cruise speed near 280 knots and about 1,000 nautical miles of range, with goals to cut emissions and noise and to inform future certification pathways.