SOUTH BURLINGTON — The building is so new that it doesn’t quite show up on phone maps.
Even so, about 400 people found their way there on Monday to mark the opening of BETA Technologies’ electric aircraft manufacturing facility, located on a sprawling 40-acre site at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport.
Production has already started at the 188,500-square-foot net zero facility, according to Kyle Clark, founder and CEO of BETA Technologies.
BETA, which plans to manufacture and assemble its all-electric aircraft for military and commercial customers at the South Burlington site, is billing it as the nation’s first large-scale manufacturing facility for electric aircraft.
The facility is capable of producing up to 300 aircraft per year, Clark said, although he doesn’t anticipate hitting that level of production until about 2027.
Gov. Phil Scott, Vermont’s two U.S. senators and one former one — Patrick Leahy — were among a host of politicians who attended Monday’s opening celebration.
“This is going to be transformative in the aviation industry,” U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told the crowd. “It makes an extraordinary contribution reducing carbon emissions.”
Leahy and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., both spoke about the importance of BETA’s contribution in boosting the economy and workforce development in Vermont.
Clark said he expects the company’s expansion to spur more trade schools in the area to feed the need for trained workers to fill the hundreds of jobs BETA expects to create.
Scott compared the company to IBM, which once created thousands of jobs in the state, calling the aircraft company’s expansion “exciting” and “groundbreaking.”
“But,” the governor continued, “this will be different because we are the first.”
Scott, who got his pilot’s license about 30 years ago, said he would love to get recertified to fly one of BETA’s electric planes.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger reflected on the seven-year-old company’s journey, from its first makeshift facility and mockup designs to the first flight, the first charging station and now the first manufacturing facility.
“This is a pretty improbable thing to do here at our Leahy Burlington Airport,” he said. “Through all that, Burlington has been proud to be a partner of BETA.”
Clark explained to onlookers that the building was built to blend in with its surroundings.
“It’s small, it’s in the ground for environmental reasons so we get really good geothermal activity here because we’re half underground and, as we double the facility, we’ll still feel tucked into the hill,” he said.
That illusion ends when you walk in and look down at the massive hanger where BETA’s crown jewel – the all-electric ALIA – gleams in the middle of the building.
As F-35s zoomed by with thunderous noise, attendees cheered as the ALIA quietly circled by three times with the faintest propeller hum “to show what it sounds like to fly with zero carbon emissions,” as Clark put it.
