Blue Spirit Aero (BSA) is developing the Dragonfly family, a new generation of hydrogen-electric aircraft designed specifically for pilot training, general aviation and military operations.

The project addresses a major challenge facing the aviation industry. The global flight training fleet is aging rapidly, with an average aircraft age of around 47 years. These aircraft are becoming increasingly expensive to maintain and not optimized for the intensive use required by modern Flight Training Organizations (FTO). At the same time, the aviation sector is expected to train approximately 660,000 new pilots over the next 20 years, creating significant pressure on training capacity worldwide.

Current training aircraft generate significant CO₂ emissions and noise pollution, while battery-electric alternatives remain limited by their endurance.

To solve this challenge, BSA is developing the Dragonfly family, combining hydrogen fuel cells with a Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) architecture featuring 12 propulsion pods along the wing. Gaseous hydrogen is stored within each pod and converted into electricity through 12 fuel cells, which power one electric motor and propeller per pod. This innovative architecture enhances safety through system redundancy while enabling efficient propulsion and optimized aircraft performance, allowing the Dragonfly 4S (4 seaters) to deliver three hours of endurance with no CO₂ emissions during flight, while reducing operating costs and environmental impact for intensive pilot training operations.

In 2025, BSA unveiled its first full-scale ground demonstrator, marking a major milestone in the development of the Dragonfly programme. The aircraft was first showcased during the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where it performed public taxiing demonstrations and live hydrogen refuelling, highlighting both the maturity of the technology and the practicality of hydrogen-powered aviation operations. It was subsequently presented at the Paris Air Show, bringing the project to an international aerospace audience.

Since then, the demonstrator successfully completed an extensive ground test campaign, including manoeuvrability, acceleration, traction and endurance tests. This progress follows numerous previously validated development milestones, including high-fidelity digital twin simulations, fuel-cell flight tests, scaled flying demonstrators, wind tunnel campaigns, iron bird testing and high-altitude hydrogen test bench.

The next major milestone for BSA is the flight test campaign of its second full-scale demonstrator, scheduled for next year. These flight tests will be a critical step in validating the aircraft’s hydrogen-electric propulsion system, overall performance, safety characteristics and operational capabilities. These upcoming flight tests will be a key milestone in the certification process of the Dragonfly, providing critical validation of performance, safety and operational readiness in real flight conditions.

Beyond the training aircraft, the Dragonfly family is designed to expand into new use cases, including a six-seater configuration for Regional Air Mobility (RAM), and a military UAV version, the Dragonfly M, built on the same Dragonfly 4S platform. The Dragonfly M is designed as a low noise, low thermal and low chemical signature platform, enabling silent and evasive surveillance missions with long range and extended loiter time. This shared architecture reduces technical, industrial and certification risks, while accelerating time-to-deployment for defense missions.