ADAC Luftrettung reserves two Volocopter eVTOL multicopters ahead of flight testing in 2023

Ger­man air res­cue organ­i­sa­tion ADAC Luftret­tung has reserved two of Volo­copter’s VoloC­i­ty mul­ti­copters, ahead of per­form­ing oper­a­tional tests in 2023 to trans­port doc­tors to a med­ical emer­gency.

The news fol­lows on from the two com­pa­nies joint­ly pub­lish­ing the world’s first fea­si­bil­i­ty study about pilot­ed mul­ti­copter use in res­cue ser­vices in Octo­ber 2020, which clear­ly showed that it is pos­si­ble, makes sense and improves emer­gency care.

This was after sim­u­lat­ing more than 26,000 emer­gency oper­a­tions with mul­ti­copters for the Ans­bach res­cue ser­vice area with the air res­cue bases in Dinkels­bühl, Bavaria and in Idar-Ober­stein, Rhineland-Palati­nate. The full study was pub­lished in Octo­ber 2020.  

In the next two years, ADAC Luftret­tung and Volo­copter will con­duct flight tests togeth­er on a spe­cial air­field to pre­pare for oper­a­tional test­ing with the reserved VoloC­i­ty in 2023.  

Frédéric Brud­er, man­ag­ing direc­tor of the non-prof­it ADAC Luftret­tung, said: “After the ground­break­ing results of our fea­si­bil­i­ty study, we are expand­ing our tech­no­log­i­cal lead with regards to inte­grat­ing mul­ti­copters in res­cue ser­vices. Volo­copter is the only eVTOL on the mar­ket that is advanced enough to reli­ably plan a test pro­gram with for our pur­pos­es.

“We are excit­ed to have secured our right to receive amongst the first VoloC­i­ty mul­ti­copters upon receival of type cer­tifi­cate.” 

Flo­ri­an Reuter, CEO of Volo­copter, added: “Our part­ner­ship with ADAC Luftret­tung, Europe’s largest heli­copter oper­a­tor, clear­ly demon­strates the poten­tial Volo­copter mul­ti­copter tech­nol­o­gy brings across all areas of mobil­i­ty— in this case as a new means to get med­ical help to more peo­ple, faster.

“By reserv­ing their first two VoloC­i­tys, ADAC Luftret­tung are mak­ing a clear state­ment of con­fi­dence about our readi­ness to deliv­er and in our mul­ti­copter tech­nol­o­gy.”

ADAC Luftret­tung and Volocopter’s part­ner­ship began in 2018 when they announced the joint case study launch spon­sored by the ADAC Foun­da­tion with the Insti­tut für Not­fallmedi­zin und Medi­z­in­man­age­ment (INM, Insti­tute for Emer­gency Med­i­cine and Med­ical Man­age­ment) at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ian Uni­ver­si­ty in Munich, to com­put­er-sim­u­late aeromed­ical mis­sions into the two men­tioned regions in Ger­many.

Volo­copter is the world’s first and only eVTOL start­up to have Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (DOA) and recent­ly announced its inten­tion to launch air taxi ser­vices in Sin­ga­pore by 2023.