19 June 2018
French start-up, Elixir Aircraft, has confirmed performance of its new two-seat trainer, the Elixir, after being allowed to extend its flight-testing programme to airfields away from its home base at Perigny.
“The Elixir is cruising at 130kt at 75% power and at 3,000ft,” explained Cyril Champenois, co-founder and chief operating officer of the company.
“Fuel consumption was 15 litres per hour. We are expecting more on the later version of the aircraft since we know some areas where we can improve the aerodynamics.”
Elixir has decided to certify the aircraft to EASA’s revised CS-23 regulations rather than the Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) category, to take advantage of the added privileges that allows.
“CS-23 certification is going pretty well,” continued Cyril. “We finished the critical areas of the flight envelope (stall at maximum balances, forward, aft), and everything is OK.
“On the commercial side, 38 aircraft have been pre-ordered including two in the UK. We are now discussing with a dealer in the UK to push the aircraft there.”
Elixir Aircraft is also proposing to offer a more powerful Rotax 915iS engine as an option in place of the standard 100hp Rotax 912iS. Base price of the Elixir is €150,000 plus VAT.
