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Interview

BNA Excites the Burgeoning eVTOL Market

BNA Commercial Director Umut KARAYEL discusses the unique properties of the versatile BNA ALESTA VTOL product family of the future in this interview. With initial target markets in Turkey and nearby countries as well as the Asia Pacific region, and recent demands for border security in Eastern Europe, the UAS eVTOL aircraft market is clearly taking off. We also talked with KARAYEL about their ongoing talks with the SSB & Turkish Aerospace regarding taking part in the MMU & HURJET programs.

Date: Issue 101 - November 2020

Defence Turkey: Mr. KARAYEL, first off, we would like to thank you for this interview. BNA ALESTA VTOL recently made its debut this summer and you started system flight tests in the first weeks of August. Could you please inform us about the latest status of the test campaign conducted in October? 

Umut KARAYEL: On behalf of BNA, I thank you for giving us this opportunity. BNA ALESTA is a very thrilling project for us. In addition to our efforts to support critical national aviation projects such as the National Combat Aircraft (MMU) and HÜRJET in our country, we have also evaluated and have conducted market research in the area of unique product development. In the first stage, we focused on an electric, fully autonomous, tilt-wing concept capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) to utilize in operations such as cargo, reconnaissance-surveillance, border security, and search and rescue. Our experienced design team started concept studies in 2019 and the "BNA ALESTA Concept Version", which we had planned to be the first member of the product family, became ready for flight tests. Our Phase-1 flight test was launched in August with our metal prototype and we tested flight control systems and the tilt-wing algorithms. As of October, we aim to initiate Phase-2 flight tests with our composite prototype which is the closest to the end-product.