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Swoop Aero and Skyports extend partnership to take drone deliveries to new heights across Europe and the Americas

Aus­tralian drone logis­tics com­pa­ny Swoop Aero and Sky­ports are extend­ing their part­ner­ship to deploy drone deliv­ery net­works across the Amer­i­c­as and Europe, after the resound­ing suc­cess in con­tribut­ing to the UK’s Nation­al Health Ser­vice COVID-19 response.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion will com­bine Sky­ports’ exper­tise in drone deliv­ery oper­a­tions with Swoop Aero’s indus­try-lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy and exten­sive expe­ri­ence to enable increased access to drone deliv­ery solu­tions in loca­tions through­out Europe and the Amer­i­c­as.

In addi­tion to stream­lin­ing and mod­ernising tra­di­tion­al logis­tics net­works, the part­ner­ship will improve crit­i­cal sup­ply chains to sup­port emer­gency respons­es, such as the COVID-19 cri­sis.

Eric Peck, CEO of Swoop Aero, said: “We’re so excit­ed to con­tin­ue to work with Sky­ports in new mar­kets across Europe and the Amer­i­c­as. With Kite™, Swoop Aero has finessed our ver­sa­til­i­ty and unlocked the skies above cities. We’re excit­ed to unlock the poten­tial of drone logis­tics for these new mar­kets.

“Swoop Aero was found­ed to trans­form the way the world moves by mak­ing access to the skies seam­less. In our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sky­ports, we have been able to treat patients in their local com­mu­ni­ties and enhance the emo­tion­al and eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty of peo­ple in the region.”

The announce­ment fol­lows Swoop Aero’s recent launch of the Kite™ air­craft. The next-gen­er­a­tion air­craft is designed with pre­ci­sion for urban flight and high-impact rur­al and remote oper­a­tions and that Swoop Aero con­sid­ers will be the most advanced air­craft of its type being pro­gressed through Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) and Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grammes.

Kite™ is the cen­tre­piece of Swoop Aero’s full tech­nol­o­gy stack, includ­ing hard­ware, soft­ware, and sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture, which will be a core com­po­nent empow­er­ing Sky­ports’ glob­al oper­a­tions.

With the part­ner­ship, Sky­ports will be the first part­ner organ­i­sa­tion of Swoop Aero to gain access to the next-gen­er­a­tion Kite™ air­craft as part of Swoop Aero’s Kite™ Pio­neer Pro­gram.

Sky­ports will incor­po­rate the Kite™ air­craft into its fleet for usage across med­ical, mar­itime and logis­tics drone deliv­ery oper­a­tions across Europe, the Amer­i­c­as and select coun­tries across Asia-Pacif­ic (APAC).

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, said: “Our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Swoop Aero has been instru­men­tal to our drone deliv­ery oper­a­tions which are help­ing to con­nect peo­ple in even the most remote geo­gra­phies.

“The exten­sion of this part­ner­ship not only demon­strates our com­mit­ment to improv­ing med­ical logis­tics and access to health­care around the world, but it also high­lights the work we’re doing to make drone deliv­er­ies a com­mer­cial, scal­able real­i­ty. The Amer­i­can and Euro­pean mar­kets have demon­strat­ed huge appetite for drone deliv­ery ser­vices, and we’re thrilled to be lead­ing the rev­o­lu­tion.”

Both com­pa­nies began their part­ner­ship in late 2020, when Sky­ports lever­aged Swoop Aero’s air logis­tics plat­form to trans­form the deliv­ery and dis­tri­b­u­tion of PPE and COVID-19 sam­ples in the hard-to-reach and geo­graph­i­cal­ly hos­tile ter­rains of the remote Scot­tish High­lands and Islands.

The oper­a­tions reduced crit­i­cal jour­ney times from two days down to as lit­tle as 30 min­utes. More recent­ly, Sky­ports has lever­aged the Swoop Aero plat­form to sup­port the trans­porta­tion of pathol­o­gy and blood sam­ples to and from rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in the Argyll and Bute region in the west of Scot­land.  

Against the back­drop of the sec­ond wave of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in the UK, Sky­ports and Swoop Aero saved more than 11,000 hours of pathol­o­gy wait­ing time and made over 422 flights beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) of the remote pilot cov­er­ing 14,000km.

Peck added: ““It’s great to see the pos­i­tive impacts that have emerged from our strate­gic part­ner­ship, and we’re look­ing for­ward to extend­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion into new mar­kets, and con­tin­u­ing to work towards Swoop Aero’s goal to pro­vide 100 mil­lion peo­ple with access to sus­tain­able drone net­works by 2025.”

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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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