World's Largest All-Electric Airliner Completes Maiden Flight for About $5 in Electricity

Heart Aerospace's X1 demonstrator — a 25,000-lb, 106-foot-wingspan aircraft, roughly the size of a conventional regional turboprop — completed a 27-minute FAA flight test over Plattsburgh, New York on August 12, 2026, reaching an altitude of 1,100 feet.

The headline number is the energy cost: the flight used more than 1 megawatt of power at points but consumed only about $5 worth of grid electricity in total, illustrating the operating-cost gap between electric and jet-fuel-powered flight at this scale.

X1 is a precursor to Heart's actual commercial product, the ES-30 — a 30-seat hybrid-electric regional airliner targeted for entry into service in 2031. The demonstrator exists to retire technical risk on the battery and propulsion system before that program moves further.

Heart already has commitments from United Airlines, Air Canada, and JSX for the ES-30, meaning this test flight is less a standalone stunt and more a milestone against an existing order book — the airlines involved have a direct stake in the technology working.

The catch, as with most hybrid-electric aircraft programs, is that ES-30 is described as hybrid-electric, not pure-electric like the X1 demonstrator — commercial service will likely combine batteries with some form of backup power for range and safety margins that pure electric can't yet match at this seat count.