Whisper Aero has broken ground on its flight test centre located at Crossville Memorial Airport in Tennessee.
Construction of the new 8,000sqft hangar has been made possible through a $1.2m appropriation from the State of Tennessee. Building is expected to begin later this year with completion planned for early next. The ceremony was attended by, amongst others, Cameron Sexton, Tennessee Speaker of the House; City of Crossville Mayor, RJ Crawford and Whisper Aero chief product officer and co-founder, Ian Villa
Villa said: “Crossville Memorial Airport — it’s not just an airport. This is really where we started a lot of the testing for our technology; it’s where we were actually able to integrate this in that hanger right there. And so this is a very special spot for us.”
Whisper Aero said its flight test centre will feature high bay areas for the OEM to test and integrate its propulsion system on future aircraft as well as office spaces for onsite engineering.
Sexton said: “This is another partnership with the state to help the city and to help Whisper Aero to build something that’s very needed, that’s very unique, that hasn’t been done in Tennessee before.” The airport, City of Crossville and Whisper Aero are also jointly installing high-power charging at the hangar to accommodate aircraft that will use Whisper’s propulsors.
The flight test center will provide additional space for Whisper’s growing team to engineer outside of its 8,000sqft engineering campus in Nashville and 40,000sqft manufacturing and ground centre in downtown Crossville.
Whisper is currently hiring for engineers and technicians across its Tennessee locations.
