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Ravn Alaska places 50-strong order with Airflow for its eSTOL aircraft, to be used for its flights across the US state

Air­flow will sup­ply 50 eSTOL air­craft to Ravn Alas­ka after sign­ing a Let­ter of Intent with the Anchor­age-based region­al air­line, tak­ing its total order book to more than $200 mil­lion.

The com­pa­ny — start­ed by five for­mer mem­bers of the Air­bus Vahana pro­gramme — con­firmed it is devel­op­ing its full-scale demon­stra­tor ear­li­er this year, which is expect­ed to go into pro­duc­tion by 2025.

On its web­site, there are two air­craft — the Mod­el 100 which has a pay­load of 500lbs plus car­go and range of 250 miles plus reserves. The Mod­el 200 air­craft can trans­port 2,000lbs of car­go a range of 500 miles plus reserves. The press release has­n’t dis­closed which air­craft will be deliv­ered to Ravn Alas­ka.

Marc Aus­man, CEO and co-founder of Air­flow, said: “From logis­tics car­ri­ers to pas­sen­ger air­lines we hear loud and clear that demand is on the rise. At Air­flow, we’re part­ner­ing with com­pa­nies that seek to add new air­craft with new capa­bil­i­ties to their fleets that are flex­i­ble, cost-effec­tive, and car­bon-neu­tral.

“The Air­flow team has designed, built, and flown new air­craft on rapid timescales togeth­er before, and now we’re apply­ing those learn­ings to an air­craft that will improve oper­at­ing eco­nom­ics for air­lines and con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to reduc­ing aviation’s car­bon impact.”

Air­flow has said its eSTOL solu­tion can save an esti­mat­ed 1.2 GT of CO2 by 2050, while its engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties exceed the high­est Lead­er­ship in Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Design stan­dards (LEED) stan­dards, which will save more than 4.2 mil­lion lbs of CO2.

Ravn Alas­ka links more than 14 com­mu­ni­ties in the US state, oper­at­ing a fleet of De Hav­il­land Dash 8–100 air­craft from Anchor­age and fly­ing to des­ti­na­tions includ­ing Kenai, Homer, Valdez, Ani­ak, Unalak­leet and Saint Paul Island. By switch­ing to elec­tric air­craft, the com­pa­ny will ben­e­fit from low­er oper­at­ing costs, reduced noise sig­na­tures and increased routes with new air­craft using elec­tric propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy.

Rob McK­in­ney, CEO of Ravn Alas­ka, said: “As a region­al oper­a­tor, we are com­mit­ted to serv­ing the many large and small com­mu­ni­ties of Alas­ka. That means we are con­stant­ly seek­ing out new ways to deliv­er the best val­ue and expe­ri­ence for Alaskans.

“With Air­flow, we ben­e­fit from the new capa­bil­i­ties the air­craft offers that open up new and dif­fer­ent des­ti­na­tions, the con­stant­ly improv­ing effi­cien­cies of elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, and align­ment between our fleet and the ris­ing demands of our cus­tomers to trav­el with the small­est car­bon foot­print pos­si­ble.” 

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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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