An aviation company attempting to develop commercially viable electric aircraft that can land and take off vertically is relocating to Paducah.
Local officials and business community members welcomed Hopflyt to western Kentucky during an event at Sprocket Tuesday.
Hopflyt co-founder Rob Winston said the company chose the city for a variety of reasons, including the Paducah campus of the University of Kentucky’s School of Engineering.
“There's both the structure here where we can get the talent, the great place to live, low cost of living compared to lots of other states around our nation, and then also the funding’s following now,” he said.
Winston also cited local and state incentives for the company’s decision to locate its principal operations in Paducah.
Hopflyt’s venture is backed by both public and private funds, notably Albers Aerospace and, through the KY Innovation investment program, Keyhorse Capital and the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development. Winston also said the company has a contract with the U.S. military.
Hopflyt will be setting up shop at Barkley Regional Airport, where they’ll develop and test the Venturi, their flagship electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The company is currently in the prototyping stage for the Venturi, which will hold four people and be able to fly like an airplane and land like a helicopter.
With many of the components having to be specially developed and custom-made, Winston thinks actual test flights won’t be happening any time soon.
“I think in three years time, we'll have this aircraft up, we'll be flying it experimentally and testing the airplane,” Winston said.
Two other, smaller varieties of aircraft – named the Squall and the Cyclone – have also been developed by HopFlyt as part of its efforts to “maximize efficiency and versatility across the entire range of the Advanced Aerial Mobility market.”
The company’s co-founders – the husband and wife team of Rob and Lucille Winston – have decades of experience in the industry. Rob is a retired U.S. Marine who worked as an operational test pilot, NASA test engineer, and aircraft designer. Lucille’s career has seen her test environment-ready hardware for the International Space Station and serve as lead engineer for military defense programs.
Emily Roark, vice chair of the Barkley Regional Airport Authority, said economic development efforts like this give needed boosts to the region’s economy and the airport.
“We are also so grateful to be a part of the economic development of our region and we are so thankful for that. If anyone's been to our airport recently, and my guess is most of you have, it's growing,” she said. “We're becoming a bigger, better airport and so we are so thankful that HopFlyt has joined us in that.”
McCracken County Judge-Executive Craig Clymer pointed out that HopFlyt’s commitment to Paducah signifies a homecoming for Steven Reid, the company’s chief financial officer.
“[He] returns home to McCracken County to manage the finances of this, until now, futuristic endeavor. The home he returns to is the county, McCracken County, in which his great, great, great grandfather, John Barton Reid, purchased fromexplorer William Clark, and named (the McCracken County community of) Reidland,” Clymer said. “So, Steve, you’ve got to know your great, great, great grandfather is proud of you, like [him] 200 years ago, investing in our great county and our community.”
