Things are looking up for Outbound Aerospace’s quest to build a new kind of passenger airplane. The Seattle startup has raised $1.15 million in pre-seed funding so far, and last weekend it sent a small-scale prototype into the skies over Oregon for its first-ever flight test.
“Over the last month, everything came together, and we went out there and got the plane up in the air, and proved that it flies,” said Jake Armenta, the former Boeing engineer who serves as Outbound’s chief technology officer and co-founder. “So, it’s been a really exciting month or two.”
The demonstrator aircraft — which is code-named STeVE (for Scaled Test Vehicle) — is a remote-controlled plane that weighs 300 pounds and has a 22-foot wingspan. That’s only one-eighth of the planned wingspan for the Olympic airliner that Outbound eventually aims to build. What’s more, the March 22 flight at the Pendleton UAS Range in eastern Oregon lasted merely 16 seconds. Nevertheless, the test proved that Outbound’s 3D-printing fabrication process could turn out a flyable carbon-fiber aircraft.
“We flew this demonstrator because I got a lot of questions,” Armenta said. “People were really pessimistic about us. I got literally laughed out of investors’ rooms here in Seattle because I told people, ‘We’re building an airplane.’ And they were like, ‘You can’t do this. No one can.’”
Despite the skepticism, Outbound has been able to bring in enough investment to support what’s now a full-time staff of five, plus “about half a dozen contractors who have helped us in various ways,” Armenta said. Over the past year, Armenta and his fellow co-founder, CEO Ian Lee, have raised $500,000 from Blue Collective, a matching amount from Antler, and another $150,000 from private investors.
