This morning Dufour Aerospace announced an agreement to sell up to 140 of its Aero2 VTOL, in what will become one of the largest civilian uncrewed drone purchases ever completed to this date.
Aero2 is a hybrid-tilt wing drone that can achieve a range of up to 400km in standard configuration and a 40kg payload and up to 1300km in long range configuration with reduced payload.
Spright will assist Dufour in obtaining type certification for the Aero2, including technical,
data, and flight activity support for demonstration purposes, such as durability, failure,
and reliability testing and detect and avoid capabilities.
Spright will also be the exclusive Aero2 service, maintenance, and training partner for third parties in North America.
At the announcement, Joseph Resnik, President of Spright, stated that «Dufour Aerospace has developed an impressive Swiss Army Knife for unmanned air mobility that will meet our anticipated future needs. With today’s announcement, we demonstrate our commitment to their vision and to their technological approach, in which we are proud to be the first operator in the U.S.»
Spright, the drone division of Air Methods, already operates a fleet of Wingcopter 168s and has signed a variety of agreements to explore drone-delivery capacities. Besides medical resource transportation, it offers remote and unmanned line inspection services.
Thomas Pfammatter, Co-Founder and CEO at Dufour Aerospace, said that «Spright’s commitment shows that there is great market potential for Aero2 for safe and efficient medium and long-range operations with unmanned aerial vehicles.»
“Our partnership, which extends far beyond unit sales of Aero2, is a significant milestone for us in our development of tilt-wing, unmanned and manned products for advanced air mobility”, he added.
Besides Aero2, Dufour is developing the manned drone Aero3, an 8-seater VTOL with the same Tilt-wing technology that could cover a range of 1020 kilometers with a 750kg payload.
