Taking a flight but no airport queue? IIT-Madras is testing that future
IIT Madras engineers are testing a vertical take-off system that could cut airport costs, connect smaller towns, and change how ordinary people fly
Imagine booking a flight with no big airport, no long runway, and no one-hour drive out of the city. Your aircraft rises straight up from a small pad like a helicopter, then cruises forward like a normal plane. A team at IIT Madras is working on technology that could one day make that idea real.
At IIT Madras, in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, a team led by Dr PA Ramakrishna has built a small test machine inside their lab. It is a tricycle platform fitted with three hybrid rocket thrusters, designed to study vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) and soft-landing control.
In one key test, the system achieved a touchdown speed of about 0.66 metres per second – roughly the speed of a slow walking step. For vertical landings, this is crucial: too fast and the vehicle slams into the ground, too slow and it can lose control and topple.
The platform is rocket-powered, but it “listens” to a computer. The onboard controller adjusts the thrust from the three hybrid rockets in real time so that the vehicle can balance itself and land softly, using air as oxidiser and wax-based solid fuel. It is essentially a new way of thinking about how aircraft might take off and land in the future.
Also read: In rare feat, ISRO’s ‘Bahubali’ injects heaviest satellite into orbit
“It is a tricycle platform as seen here. We have hybrid rocket motors at three locations, just like an aircraft landing gear,” said Dr PA Ramakrishna. “These are the fuel blocks. When you pass air and ignite it, it starts to balance itself out and hold that horizontal position. Now it can do this repeatedly. The challenge is to scale this up to an actual aircraft level.”
Why VTOL matters
Today, most flying machines fall into two broad categories. Helicopters can go straight up and down, making them useful in tight spaces, but they are slower, have shorter range, and are often less efficient. Fixed-wing aircraft are excellent for high-speed, long-distance travel, but they need long runways to take off and land.
VTOL technology tries to combine the best of both: helicopter-style vertical take-off and landing with airplane-style speed and range. The IIT Madras work is one attempt to imagine how that hybrid might be engineered using rockets rather than traditional rotor systems.
There is also an economic argument. When you pay for a flight today, a big part of the cost is not just fuel, but infrastructure. Runways are often 2–3 kilometres long and need huge tracts of land plus spending on pavements, lighting, safety zones, terminals, parking bays and more.
If aircraft can take off vertically, such long runways are not always necessary. Smaller hubs like helipads or compact pads could handle even medium-sized aircraft. That could improve connectivity between smaller cities and towns, cut waiting times at gates, and over time, lower infrastructure costs so flying can become more affordable.
Strategic edge in war
VTOL capability is not just about convenience. It has a clear role in military operations and emergencies. In wartime, one of the first targets is often the runway. If an air force depends only on long runways, a single well-planned strike can ground multiple aircraft.
With VTOL-capable aircraft, operations can continue even if the main runway is damaged. Aircraft can be dispersed, take off from improvised pads, and operate closer to forward areas or in rough terrain where building a full runway is impossible.
Also read: IIT-M incubated Yotuh Energy powers India’s cold chain transition to electric
Referring to a recent Indian operation, Dr PA Ramakrishna pointed out the vulnerability:
“If you remember during Operation Sindoor, we hit the runway of our adversary. Someday somebody can do it to us also. How do we react to that situation? With this technology we can take off without the runway requirement, and that will be a big bonus in such an event.”
From 50 kg to real aircraft
For now, the IIT Madras VTOL system is a small-scale demonstration. The current platform is designed to handle a total weight of roughly 40–50 kilograms. The team’s next target is more ambitious: to lift a person plus extra payload, around 80 kilograms or more, and then scale up further.
The realistic next step is to bolt this hybrid-rocket VTOL system onto small fixed-wing UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), test it in real outdoor conditions, and only then think about adapting it for larger civil or military aircraft.
To move from a lab platform to full-scale aircraft, the team sees three major engineering challenges:
Rethinking the engine mix
The IIT Madras team’s concept challenges a long-standing assumption in fighter and transport aircraft design: that a single gas-turbine engine system must handle both vertical lift (in those few aircraft that can do it) and forward cruise.
In many current VTOL designs abroad, gas turbines are pushed to their limits to generate enough vertical lift as well as horizontal thrust. That makes the system bulkier and more complex. By contrast, the hybrid-rocket approach treats vertical thrust as a separate, short-duration job, opening the door to lighter, more efficient cruise engines.
Also read: NIRF Ranking 2025: IIT Madras No. 1 again; see full list of top colleges, universities
“We are trying to see what happens if we separate those two things,” said Dr Anandu Bhadran. “Use gas turbines for cruise flight and an additional system for vertical take-off, which can give much better thrust for a short duration. We have to think about how to bring it together and use it together.”
If this technology works at scale, the VTOL aircraft of the future – the ones that rise from small pads, skip the runway, and then dash away like conventional jets – may well trace their origins back to this small tricycle platform quietly hovering in a Chennai lab.
The content above has been transcribed from video using a fine-tuned AI model. To ensure accuracy, quality, and editorial integrity, we employ a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) process. While AI assists in creating the initial draft, our experienced editorial team carefully reviews, edits, and refines the content before publication. At The Federal, we combine the efficiency of AI with the expertise of human editors to deliver reliable and insightful journalism.
