Witness the Future of Flight at Farnborough International Airshow 2026

Good afternoon and welcome to the Farnborough International Air Show and the first public flight of GE Aerospace's hybrid electric flight demonstrator. I'm Rich Price and I'm here with Christine Andrews from GE Aerospace. Hi Christine. Hey Rich. Over the next 15 minutes or so we're going to take you behind the scenes of a significant moment in aviation. It's the first public demonstration of megawatt class hybrid electric propulsion in an airliner sized aircraft. Today represents the culmination of more than a decade of innovation led by GE Aerospace with important contributions from NASA, Boeing and Beta Technologies. Christine, what are we in for today? Today we are in for a world first. Today, July 20th, marks the very first public demonstration of a hybrid electric aircraft flight in operation on a Saab 340B. What that means is we are at commercial size and scale in terms of power at one megawatt as well as multi-kilovolt. That means on that right hand side of the aircraft you have double the power than what you would normally have. This aircraft can both motor pull power off of the battery as well as generate and put power back onto the battery as well as go into super mode which means 2x power on that right hand side. So it's a real treat and we're going to make history with this debut to the world today. Let's go. Before hybrid takes to the sky in a little less than 15 minutes we're going to introduce you to the technology, we're going to meet some of the people who built and tested it and we're going to see inside this extraordinary effort that moved hybrid electric propulsion from years of research and development into real world flight. Here's a preview of this remarkable program. The EPFD program is the first and only program of its type to fly at commercial grade altitudes in hybrid mode. We're able to pull power off of the batteries as well as recharge the batteries in flight. You have GE Aerospace who is the world leader in building turbine engines and you have Beta Technologies who's become the world leader in all electric engines and aircraft and here we are flying this aircraft together from two different companies and making history. We're maturing these technologies to go into our next generation of commercial turbo fans that are going to power commercial airliners in the future. It allows us to do more with the aircraft, it changes the way we operate the aircraft, it allows us to be more efficient. This is changing the face of aviation and aerospace. Live from Farnborough which is in southern England, it's about 40 miles southwest of London. Farnborough is one of the world's great stages in aviation. It's a place where groundbreaking aircraft and technologies have been introduced to the world since 1948. At that inaugural show, 1948, the Vickers Viscount helped usher in the turboprop era. A year later the de Havilland Comet introduced the world to commercial jet travel and in 1960 the Hawker P-1127 paved the way for vertical flight. In 1970 here at Farnborough, Concorde's dramatic flyover offered the world a first glimpse of supersonic passenger travel. 20 years ago the Airbus A380 brought new scale to commercial aviation. Christine, for more than 75 years Farnborough has been a place where aviation's future first becomes visible. Talk about how today's demonstration of hybrid electric propulsion belongs in that tradition. Oh Rich, I love the history that you shared here and I'm so proud to be a part of the history that we're making today. You went through the history of the very first turbojet engine. Here we're taking the next step in that propulsive efficiency journey where we're demonstrating that we've learned how to incorporate electrification with the gas turbine engine. This is combining that history of a turboprop, commercial grade altitudes, and commercial grade scale and we're going to unveil that to the world today. 40 years ago GE had its very first unducted fan flying demonstrator and we haven't had one since. So today, exactly 40 years later, is a day for us to make history just again. There's been a series of milestones along the path to making history today and one of those milestones, Christine, was back in April with the first run of the hybrid electric propulsion system. Describe to me what that day felt like. For me, Rich, personally that day was the most emotional day of the entire program. After years and years of testing in the lab, relentless design build testing cycles, getting the system tuned exactly the way we wanted it to be, doing the ground test demonstrator. That day in April was the day that we turned the hybrid system on in the aircraft and it worked perfectly the first time and that is the day that I knew we were going to make history and that this was going to go exactly according to plan and I'm very happy to say after counting down to July 20th for years that we did exactly just that in the exact manner that we wanted to with some time to spare. That's awesome and we have a video of that emotional day in April when we ran the hybrid for the first time. We're on camera people. We should all wave. Wave at the camera. Wave. Hi, we're excited. Chucky Poo and Charles are hugging. Oh, hell yeah. Nice work team. That's awesome. Our calendars for a long time. What does it feel like to actually be here July 20th, 2026? I said this earlier in the press conference. It's like the best of all worlds. It's like your birthday except better because it's really the birth date of the next generation of engine design introducing electrification. I can't believe this day is actually here. I want to pinch myself. Everything's going according to plan and we're having a lot of fun along the way. And we got a great day. Excellent day. Blue sky. This program is the hybrid electric flight demonstrator. What does that mean? What is this program demonstrating? This program is demonstrating that hybrid electric technology meaning introducing electrification combined with a gas turbine is ready for today. If you go back in time, this has been talked about for years and years, but this is the next step in propulsive efficiency. And what we're showing today is that it is ready for prime time, ready to be introduced into a product and flying it at 30,000 feet is what most airliners fly at. My flight over here was at 37,000 feet. In our 30,000 foot mission, we took the Saab beyond what it's rated for. It usually flies in the 26 to 28,000 foot altitude. What we've been able to demonstrate is that the hybrid technology is able to take it beyond its typical flight envelope. We've been able to explore different parts of the flight map to show where hybrid is beneficial, both in pushing power to the propeller as well as charging the battery. We did a long extensive ferry flight over here where the hybrid mode was also enabled across the flight pattern. Well you mentioned the ferry flight. Obviously before it can fly here at Farnborough, it had to fly here to the UK from the United States. That in itself was an achievement and you were on that ferry flight. Tell us what that was like. Where did you go from and what was it like? It was absolutely fantastic and as you know we took a very historic mission that has been used for many years in order to get back and forth from North America to Europe. We did all of our flight test operations in Plattsburgh, New York at the Beta Flight Test Facility and from there we left to go to Goose Bay, Canada where we spent a night before departing for Nook, Greenland. From Nook we headed to Keflavik, Iceland. From Iceland we headed to Wick, Scotland and from there we went down to Bournemouth where we've had the aircraft waiting before heading to Farnborough to do our flight displays and that leads us to where we are today and each leg of that journey has been just extraordinary. We've done world first as we crossed the ocean and utilized the hybrid system in order to get here more efficiently. It offered the pilots an opportunity to fly in a way that hasn't been done before, get to altitude more quickly and give them another vector in which they wanted to operate. Not only was it history making but it looked like a lot of fun and we have a video of that ferry flight journey. All right here we go Jerry. I'm sitting here on the tarmac ready to fly our CX-300. We got a Chinook doing pirouettes in the sky, high performance flying and right behind that is the EPFD, which we call Northwind Flight Demonstrator, getting ready to fly here at the Farnborough International Airshow and this is just a huge day for us because that aircraft has gone through so much testing on the ground at GE, in the test cells, on the ground at Beta, in the air, across the North Atlantic and the team in that cockpit, I'm a little jealous to be honest with you. It just, I mean that's a fun flight. I mean I get to fly this airplane so I'm not that jealous. Sorry we got we got comms coming in. You're seeing this real time as we're getting ready to go fly. We're about eight minutes away from flying the the Saab based on a little bit of a push in timing here and then I get to go up and fly behind it. So hopefully we'll stay out of the wake turbulence because that's the biggest hybrid airplane to fly at commercial grade altitudes and you know they're about to go on show off the e-boost. We're going to get see some 45 nose high climbs, some wing overs and what a great display of the technological investment that GE, that Beta's made and making that happen. So I got to focus on flying. I'm going to go back to visualization and thanks Jerry. I appreciate it. Let me have a nice word about these guys flying and the team behind it. When I think we look back at history, all hybrid beginnings will have started with proving this very first hybrid electric flight at commercial grade altitudes. The fact that we've been so quiet about this and people don't know where this project is and then we just show up is the ultimate mic drop. It's absolutely the ultimate mic drop Christine. Word's gotten out around Farnborough. We've been walking around the show. Can't you tell there's a ton of excitement? I can feel the buzz and energy around the entire chalet, the space around the plane, just the excitement of a world first happening here. Definitely. In just a few moments hybrid is going to take to the skies over Farnborough. Christine, today is the culmination of more than a decade from thousands of people from GE Aerospace, from NASA, from Boeing and of course Beta Technologies, but it also represents a first step as you say. Taking megawatt class hybrid electric propulsion, integrating it into an airliner sized aircraft and demonstrating it publicly and safely for the first time. Let's go live to the flight deck and we're going to see our pilots Chris Caputo and Nick Wilson. Chris is the head of flight ops at Beta Technologies. He's a retired Air Force fighter pilot where he flew A-10s and F-16s. He also flew Boeing 75 and 767s for Delta Airlines. Alongside Chris is Nick Wilson who also served as Beta's chief engineer through the modification of the Saab 340B and the integration of GE Aerospace's hybrid system. They're getting ready to make history Christine. I cannot wait to see this. As we wait for them to taxi, obviously this was an engineering feat to get to this point, but it was also in a lot of ways a human engineering feat. Talk about the collaboration between GE Aerospace and its partners. Oh yes, you're absolutely right. We've had such a great partnership across the entire duration of the program. It really starts with GE Aerospace. I want to give a big shout out to all the engineers that we have at home watching this now from a distance. They've been a part of the journey. I want to give a big shout out to the Beta team that helped with the integration. We're here at the Beta Chalet looking at the 747. Shout out to the Boeing Aurora Flight Sciences team who helped with the design and the nacelle delivery. And then finally to NASA. You know we talk about the world first. NASA was integral in sharing lessons learned with us on things that haven't gone well, which led to today going well. There's only so many people in the world that you can really nerd out with and take those lessons learned to create a future. And I would put Beta Technologies in that exact same camp. You bringing in the electrification experience that you have, us bringing in our propulsion experience is all just a winning combination where each party really carried their own weight and helped one another across the board. It's been just an excellent experience. Well and in my experience in my career I've never seen a partnership blend this well. Don't you agree? I completely agree. I feel like I'm actually working with my very best friends and it was exhilarating to come in day after day breaking our own records together just like another day in the office with your friends. Well you mentioned the 747 that was behind us. It has the same livery as the Saab. Talk about this sort of big sister little sister dynamic. Yeah little known fact the little sister actually determined the big sister's livery. I love that they're sharing a matching livery because they have so much in common. Both are purposed to take as much engineering data as humanly possible. When you look at the Saab 340 it's to take as much data as it relates to the hybrid system so we understand how it works across the flight envelope. Loads and loads of data coming in to our engineers so we understand the system better ensure it's operating exactly as planned and start designing for our next generation especially as it relates to the RISE engine. When you look at the FTB the FTB is the flying test bed inside it there are engineering workstations where engineers can fly around and take data live and here again what they share in common is just endless amounts of data so we understand how the system works. Where these two test beds are really going to cross over is as we finish collecting data on EPFD we're going to take the hybrid system and integrate it into the RISE engine which will be put on the 747 to start flying around and test. They usually use the number two slot to test out all new engines so we ensure that safety and quality are always number one on our mind and it makes our engineers pretty happy to ingest all that data. You mentioned earlier that this is the first time in 40 years that GE's had a flight demonstrator that may surprise people to learn that talk about what that means for GE to be here again at the Farnborough International Air Show with a flight demonstrator. You know what I actually love about it being 40 years ago is the 40 years ago was the unducted fan and RISE takes its learnings from the unducted fan. Sometimes we go into technology and the world's not quite ready for it. When you look at RISE we are more and more ready for it every single day. Similar to EPFD the RISE program is delivering real tests, real hardware and EPFD is just one step in that journey. So our pilots are getting ready to do their routine. We're a couple minutes away as they're taxiing into position. Christine you mentioned 30,000 feet as one of the milestones of this program. Talk more about what the significance of reaching 30,000 feet and the difficulties of getting there with hybrid up to this point. A lot of other companies and players along the way have tried. We actually ran into a similar quote. There's a quote at GE around CMCs where the quote was pigs will fly before CMCs do and that's hanging in a lot of our offices as you can imagine. The electrification journey has been very similar where there was a lot of doubt, a lot of concerns, there's been ups and downs on the technology and getting to 30,000 feet is putting the map completely together where we say this is a very real thing. It's ready for prime time, it's ready for integration and the next step is getting this into a product and what GE has done is gone both high power and high voltage. We are ready for whatever the industry puts forward as the challenge and whatever air framers welcome on a product offering. We've taken on the toughest engineering challenge we could possibly find and we're looking forward to making it more packageable and more durable so it fits into the product. Our pilots are about to take off here. It's quite a sporty air display. It really is. Watching this in real life, I hope it comes through on the camera. The amount of maneuvers that they're going to do and go into both generating and motoring mode through the flight display in a very small circle is quite impressive. As you mentioned, we have very experienced pilots on board. We also have... So we're taking off. They're taking the taxiway now. So it's very exciting that we have both beta pilots on board flying this today. As you're aware, during the test campaign we had both GE pilots as well as beta pilots getting to each one of these progressively more difficult technical milestones and it was a very common joke among the team on how long the record was going to last. Whether it be altitude or duration of flight, it's been a really fun experience to see that friendly challenge among the pilots but also among the team. Well and obviously for today's flight demonstration, they'll be about 1,500 feet. What was the official altitude record? The official altitude record was well over 30,000 feet. We'll just leave it there. I think I've got a few challenges up my sleeve when we get back home but we'll say, as Mohammed would say, more to come. You mentioned the GE Aerospace team back home. What would you like to say to those folks because there's been a tremendous amount of effort and work that's gone into this program. I'm so glad you mentioned that. First of all, I'd like to say thank you and it's not just you know GE Aerospace engines. It's really been a labor of love across GE. We have Avio that did both the propeller gearbox as well as the combining gearbox. We have the electric power team which did the power electronics. We even had GE Vernova help out on the motors and across the business, it's just been everybody leaning into a challenge that hasn't been solved before. Unison helped with the saw torque sensor among other technology and when you look at that total GE effort, it's just really incredible to see what the GE Aerospace company can do. It really is and it's been a privilege and a pleasure in my career to be able to work with this GE Aerospace team. All such great people and true professionals. We're getting ready here. We're getting ready here for the live demonstrator. I'm waiting with anticipation. Seems like we've got Chinook up there now with the Saab 340 hitting the skies next. You can just tell people are are sort of migrating to the fence line because there's just so much enthusiasm and expectation to see this first ever hybrid electric propulsion demonstration flight in an airliner sized aircraft. This is really really exciting. It is very exciting. And we as we said earlier we really lucked out with the weather. You know this is England after all. This could be a rainy day as my my English mother might say. Any day in England could be any day in England. So we're speaking of my mother Christine. I have to tell you that as a young girl in 1953 she came her dad brought her to the Farnborough International Air Show. She was telling me she was very excited to know that I was going to be here all these many years later. I hope that she's able to see this live demo today and reach back into her childhood not knowing what the world was going to have in store. Similarly we have a chief engineer on our team whose father flew the exact route that we took to ferry over here. So the interconnectedness and the pull towards aviation among families is truly incredible. It really is. And by the way her father put her under a blanket so he wouldn't have to pay for it. It was one shilling. All right here we come down the runway. Let's watch history. Let's watch history. Christine what's it like been like to work on a program like a history making program like this? You've spent years working on this program. Oh here it is. Here it is. Look at that beautiful livery. I love hearing the claps. Yes I haven't heard any claps yet. No I think we're the very first to get some applause. It's fantastic to see the crowd gathered around watching the plane take off. So this is about a six minute and 40 second display. They're coming around as they come back to around the show center. They're going to be in hybrid mode. Talk to us about the different modes of this hybrid system. Sure we have two primary I would say power flow directions. First pulling power off of the battery. The second is putting power back onto the battery in charge mode. And then you can hear it when it wants to go in boost mode which gives you double the power on the right hand side. So they've just gone into boost mode and as they climb from here to about 1,500 feet they're going to be drawing on e-boost. This is going to help them really get to altitude where they want to be more quickly. I know Chris and Nick really enjoy doing this routine. It's a lot of fun. Very sporty routine. I know they've got varied history and backgrounds and I think they're putting it to good use on this flight routine. Christine what is the significance for this program for the average consumer for the average air traveler? I think hybrid cars have been around for a very long time and the world has started to see that benefit through and through. Here what we're demonstrating is it's ready for aviation. A lot of the challenge comes at altitude and with the 30,000 feet we were able to show that altitude is not a concern or constraint and by taking on the high power high voltage we said we're really ready for anything and so if there's one thing that the average consumer should take away is the future is coming more quickly than they ever imagined. You talk about two times power it's almost like having an extra engine in this aircraft right? It really is yeah and it's enough power to power 500 homes. Wow so now they're generating here. This means that they're putting power right back onto that battery and we talked about in the ferry flight they did a lot of charging on the descent into each one of the locations after pulling power off the batteries in order to get to their desired altitude and here they're doing all of this in a very short six minute routine. You know one of the things I've noticed this week as we've been setting up for the show is all the pilots who are coming by and really intrigued by this. It's sort of counterintuitive to a lot of what they're used to and and they can't believe this is actually happening. I think that for the pilots it offers a new way to fly with the hybrid button essentially coming on or the hybrid throttle they're able to fly differently than what they have before. No different from an engineering perspective we're able to design differently than we have before. It's a new vector for us to think about as we go through flight. So a lot of people watching may have themselves a hybrid vehicle it's sort of people can think of it like a hybrid car but in plane form. That's right this particular setup the pilots are able to command how much hybrid they want to do over the flight map which was where what we designed it to so we can learn more about the system. I can foresee future generations it being more like your car where you don't even know it's gone into hybrid mode because it's happening automatically. You mentioned that the modified engine is in the right hand side. That's right. Talk about that side of the of the engine or of the plane that there's a a ct7 and a motor generator and they they're paired together. How does that work? Yeah I love this question. So the motor generator sits directly beneath the ct7 and we have a combining gearbox as I mentioned provided by Avio to put those together which is why we can use either operation or both together as we desire. I personally think the right hand side looks a lot sportier. I put it into the muscle car yeah you know it's got the air intake just like any muscle car would and it's not for show it's for real and you see what the future starts to look like on the right hand side while the left hand side maintains a single ct7. So this is obviously history making to the extent that you could talk about it Christine what's next for GE Aerospace where does this how does this act as a springboard to what comes next? GE is very focused on the future of flight as you're aware we've been working on this for well over a decade starting with initial trade studies and moving gradually up to get to this point. When you look at what comes next it's integrating this into a product so that way we show the world what we can do we can help airlines by reducing their variable fuel prices and cost and integrate it in so it's seamless. So they're coming by a low pass with the gear down flaps out this is an opportunity to see the GE Aerospace and Beta Technologies logos on the under the wings look at this this is so awesome. So beautiful I love those underwing logos it's so cool. Christine you've been working on this program for years and it's been in a lot of ways a very closely held secret what does it feel is it there must be some sense of relief to finally get to today to have this the cat out of the bag? Oh absolutely I would say you know when I took this role I remember saying to our leadership I wanted to do something that had never been done before and to live through the journey and be here today and see it flying although we're not doing the 30,000 feet today doing a world first here at the air show is beyond a dream come true it's beyond a job high or a career high it's really a lifetime high there's only so many opportunities you get to do something that's never been done before and I am so pleased and proud to be standing here and representing the team that I'm representing across all of the teams that have worked on this it's just truly incredible once in a lifetime opportunity. Well and I can tell that the pilots are having a good time there's a giant smile on their faces. Yeah I think they're having fun I think that they know that they're doing something that's never been done before and knowing them I'm sure they're having a great time. I can't believe the clear skies that we have for this we really couldn't have dialed it in any better you're talking about blue skies it feels great to be working on cleaner sky technology making the future more accessible. Well and we talked before we came to England let's let's all bring our rain jackets and we knew that if we did it would mean we would have blue skies as the plane is coming in for a landing what an incredible routine. It's been absolutely excellent to share the day here with you go through this historic moment share our partnership and share with the world a world first in the news of 30,000 feet as well as the first break to the world of the Farnborough Air Show. I love that we were able to bring this world first to folks back home because I know as we talked about there are literally hundreds of people in Cincinnati and and of course in Burlington and elsewhere that have really worked so hard and long days long weeks to contribute to today's history making flight. That is so true I couldn't be more grateful for the passion and drive to do something that has not been done before together big thanks to everybody at home and looking forward to doing it again sometime. Well it's a beautiful day here at Farnborough a blue skies kind of day you said a cleaner skies kind of day for the industry what we've just witnessed is more than a historic first public demonstration it's a glimpse of how turbine and electric power can work together to shape the future of flight. Christine what are your thoughts after having seen this first flight? I honestly cannot believe it even though I've been working on this for so long the fact that today July 20th is the day I don't think my smile could be more ear to ear and I hope the entire team at home shares that and quite honestly I hope the whole world shares this same feeling that the future is coming faster than they anticipated. Well we get to see this four more times because it's it's flying all week and and Farnborough has always been a place where aviation's next chapter takes to the sky today hybrid electric propulsion join that tradition it's just really really exciting the now what's flying is the CX300 which is the beta all-electric aircraft Kyle Clark beta's founder CEO is flying that. Also a beautiful sight here in the skies today. Thank you for joining for this live stream and on behalf of GE Aerospace, NASA, Boeing and everyone at Beta Technologies I'm Rich Price here with Christine Andrews. Christine thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much Rich it's been a real pleasure. It's goodbye from Farnborough and here's to the public here's to the future of flight. Cheers.