Aviation pioneer Charles Kingsford Smith flew into small settlements on Eyre Peninsula almost 90 years ago, and this week a small plane nicknamed Bobby has become a modern pioneer by making historic landings at similar remote outposts.

The Pipistrel Alpha Electro, nicknamed "Bobby", is Australia's only certified commercial electric aeroplane.

Owner Barrie Rogers of Eyre to There Aviation bought it in February 2020 from a West Australian company that had planned trips to Rottnest Island but discovered the distance was too far for its battery capabilities.

As with electric cars, the plane needs to be recharged regularly.

But now Bobby's South Australian owners have clocked-up a distance endurance world record covering about 1,400 kilometres, eclipsing the previous 750km record set in Germany last year.

The logistics of the record attempt included two support vehicles and two support planes to help recharge Bobby and locate landing strips every 35 to 45 minutes.

"We're still learning about the aeroplane on a trip like this as well. We seem to average 40 to 45 minutes, but we've been able to land at places with a lot of battery left for a safety margin," Mr Rogers said.

"We use a three-phase power outlet in the hanger, and if we're really offsite — which we have been the last few days — we plug it into the generator system and a recharge is about 45 minutes to an hour."

Mr Rogers said one of the outcomes of the record attempt would be looking at locations for future recharge points for electric planes.

Outback landings

He said the distance between major airports had meant there were some unusual stopovers.

"We landed at Corunna and Nonning stations, basically out the back of Iron Knob up to the north-west," Mr Rogers said.

"We're not pioneering like the old days where they didn't have a landing strip and someone forged one out of the bush, but it's a challenge.

He said the plane was small but powerful.

"It has a very small electric motor in it and it's powered by two batteries. They're putting out about 200 volts," Mr Rogers said.

"Your car battery is 12 volts so it's a lot of power — that's about 58 kilowatts of power going to the aeroplane so it's quite a powerful little plane."

Mr Rogers said he was excited about the future of electric planes because they were quieter than conventional aircraft, cheaper to run, and had superior acceleration.

"Really there's no waiting time like in a petrol engine to gather your speed, it's basically all up front and it will climb to 12,000 to 15,000 feet a minute, so it's very, very quick," Mr Rogers said.

Future planes

He said that globally there are around about 400 companies investigating flying prototypes of electric and other variants of propulsion.

"From a mainstream point of view we may be a few years away from before we start seeing commuter planes from here [Port Lincoln] to Adelaide being electric, but it is coming," Mr Rogers said.

He said one of the highlights of the trip was showing Bobby to students at Ungarra on Eyre Peninsula where they landed on a strip in a grain crop.

Mr Rogers said they had a great reception landing among the large commercial planes at Adelaide airport, particularly from the air traffic controllers who were used to much larger aircraft.

The world records have yet to be verified but include longest duration, longest distance over water, and fastest speed by an electric plane.