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Horizon Aircraft CEO Brandon Robinson provides more details following its acquisition by Astro Aerospace

It’s been a busy start to 2021 for Hori­zon Air­craft. The Cana­di­an aero­space firm recent­ly came out of stealth mode and revealed its stun­ning Cavorite X5 air­craft, which fea­tures a patent­ed wing design to enable high­ly effi­cient oper­a­tional flight. And more recent­ly, it has now been acquired by Astro Aero­space.

But it’s still full steam ahead for the team, led by CEO Bran­don Robin­son and his father Bri­an. eVTOL Insights caught up with Bran­don to get more insight into its lat­est news and what this means for the com­pa­ny going for­ward.

Q: Bran­don, many con­grat­u­la­tions on this lat­est news. Are you able to tell us more about the back­ground behind this agree­ment?

BR: “We have admired Astro since their pio­neer­ing efforts back in 2017, when it was one of the first eVTOL com­pa­nies to fly with a per­son on-board. A cou­ple of years ago we had the chance to help Astro with some of their tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment, and we have remained con­nect­ed since then. The team at Astro has been sup­port­ive of our Cavorite X5 project and even­tu­al­ly it made sense to com­bine our efforts. I think one of the coolest things about the acqui­si­tion by Astro is that we will be the only eVTOL with a hor­i­zon­tal­ly inte­grat­ed offer­ing.

“With Elroy we have the short range eVTOL tra­di­tion­al “air taxi”, mov­ing pas­sen­gers around safe­ly and at very low cost. Alta will focus on short range car­go and some spe­cial mis­sions with a focus on low oper­at­ing costs and seam­less inte­gra­tion for its mis­sion sets. The Cavorite X5 dove­tails on to the offer­ing with a high speed medi­um to long range capa­bil­i­ty for pas­sen­ger, air car­go, mede­vac, dis­as­ter relief and oth­er spe­cial­ty mis­sions.”

Q: What has feed­back from the indus­try been like fol­low­ing the acqui­si­tion?

BR: “The feed­back has been very pos­i­tive. Like every start­up in this space, many strug­gle for legit­i­ma­cy until you prove your­self. Hav­ing the recog­ni­tion from a pio­neer in the eVTOL mar­ket has gen­er­at­ed some real­ly pos­i­tive feed­back.”

Q: With com­ing out of stealth mode last month, and now this acqui­si­tion by Astro, it’s been quite a whirl­wind start for you and the team this year!

BR: “It cer­tain­ly has been a whirl­wind, but very excit­ing. You nev­er have to moti­vate any­one at Hori­zon Air­craft. It’s just such an excit­ing project: work­ing on lead­ing-edge tech­nol­o­gy, build­ing an amaz­ing new machine that is going to dis­rupt the mar­ket, and hav­ing a fly­ing pro­to­type already.

“We just have an incred­i­bly expe­ri­enced team and when you have peo­ple that have been build­ing aero­planes for half a cen­tu­ry like my father, they know how to make smart choic­es ear­ly and keep laser focus on build­ing a machine that will accom­plish the tar­get­ed mis­sions. Real­ly, this speaks to focus. And focus means accu­ra­cy and speed to mar­ket.”

Q: Will this acqui­si­tion help accel­er­ate Hori­zon Air­craft’s jour­ney to mar­ket?

BR: “Yes. By com­bin­ing Astro’s resources with our own, we’ll be able to dra­mat­i­cal­ly accel­er­ate devel­op­ment.”

Q: Where do you think Astro can have the great­est impact for Hori­zon Air­craft going for­ward?

BR: “Astro offers expe­ri­ence and pedi­gree. They have been in the eVTOL mar­ket­place since the begin­ning. Although admit­ted­ly they have not com­mu­ni­cat­ed well, there has been sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment work ongo­ing.

“But this type of devel­op­ment is com­plex and they had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to add our engi­neer­ing mus­cle into the equa­tion. And Hori­zon Air­craft will ben­e­fit from the addi­tion­al resources avail­able to a pub­lic com­pa­ny. Anoth­er advan­tage is that the pub­lic will also be able to invest in the vision and enjoy a pret­ty amaz­ing growth sto­ry.”

Q: Are you able to expand on your vision, and what would it ide­al­ly look like for both Astro and Hori­zon?

BR: “With this acqui­si­tion Astro will be the only com­pa­ny with fly­ing prod­ucts across the entire AAM spec­trum. While oth­ers focus on niche mis­sions, we will have prod­ucts for each seg­ment. It’s that hor­i­zon­tal inte­gra­tion that we are excit­ed about. While oth­er com­pa­nies spend mil­lions mar­ket­ing eVTOL air­craft with thou­sands of pounds of bat­ter­ies on-board we will stay focused on build­ing high­ly engi­neered, prac­ti­cal­ly use­ful and safe air­craft.”

Q: Your father has amassed sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in build­ing air­craft over the last 50 years. He also must be excit­ed at the prospect of work­ing on Astro’s port­fo­lio?

BR: “It real­ly is inter­est­ing because as I said, almost two years ago we looked at Astro’s port­fo­lio from an engi­neer­ing per­spec­tive and made some tech­ni­cal rec­om­men­da­tions. We’ve also been doing some con­sult­ing for them and that led to a close rela­tion­ship with their devel­op­ment team.

“My father was the mind behind those ear­ly rec­om­men­da­tions and as such he is famil­iar with Astro’s advanced prod­ucts. So, he has been think­ing about this for quite a while and now we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to imple­ment some of our ideas.”

Q: Are you able to dis­close what will hap­pen now for the rest of the year?

BR: “There will be some announce­ments on board posi­tions and I can say there’s going to be a very strong lead­er­ship team at Astro, from the board lev­el all the way down. Some of these folks will have very deep indus­try con­nec­tions in aero­space.

“With this type of pow­er­ful net­work, Astro will have access to elite tech­nolo­gies and resources that per­haps oth­ers do not. Bot­tom line, there’s going to be a lot of sup­port behind us going for­ward and this is one of the things I’m most excit­ed about.”

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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