Airbus' Vahana Makes Its First Flight--And Now Must Defeat Bureaucracy

At 8:52 on the morning of January 31, eight buzzing rotors lifted a black bubble of an aircraft off the ground for the first time. About 20 feet from nose to tail and the same from wingtip to wingtip, Vahana spent 53 seconds aloft, under its own power and autonomous control. It reached a height of 16 feet, looming over the runway at Oregon's Pendleton UAS Test Range like a gigantisized quadcopter drone. The flight may not sound like much, but the team from Airbus' Silicon Valley outpost, A 3, and aerospace experts say such flights of experimental aircraft mark the start of a fundamental change in the way we get around. "The revolution of aviation we see today is comparable to the jet age," says Jim Gregory, director of the Aerospace Research Center at The Ohio State University.