Flapper and Skyportz select Electra.aero’s eSTOL aircraft for urban air mobility services in Latin America and Australia

Electra.aero has secured pur­chase com­mit­ments for 180 of the com­pa­ny’s hybrid eSTOL) air­craft totalling more than $500 mil­lion in val­ue, after sign­ing agree­ments with Flap­per, Sky­portz and Bris­tow Group.

Com­bined, the three part­ner­ships give Elec­tra an inside track on the design, oper­a­tion, ground sup­port, and mar­ket­ing of its inno­v­a­tive air­craft. It will be a fixed-wing air­craft ini­tial­ly capa­ble of car­ry­ing up to sev­en pas­sen­gers and a pilot or 1,800 pounds of car­go up to 500 miles in all weath­er con­di­tions. 

Its abil­i­ty to take off and land in just 100 feet enables flight oper­a­tions from places pre­vi­ous­ly inac­ces­si­ble by flight, includ­ing urban rooftops and cor­po­rate park­ing lots. Elec­tra says its tech­nol­o­gy deliv­ers 2.5x the pay­load and 10X longer range with 70 per cent low­er oper­at­ing costs than ver­ti­cal take­off alter­na­tives.

Flap­per is Latin Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing char­ter flight reser­va­tion plat­form and under a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing, Elec­tra will be Flap­per’s pre­ferred air­craft provider for five-plus seat region­al air ser­vices. And as Elec­tra’s pre­ferred ser­vice provider in Brazil, Flap­per has com­mit­ted to pur­chas­ing 15 of its eSTOL air­craft with an option for a fur­ther 15. The two com­pa­nies will joint­ly pur­sue new route net­works includ­ing for heli­port oper­a­tors and real estate devel­op­ers and investors.

Paul Mal­ic­ki, CEO of Flap­per, said: “Our tran­si­tion to sus­tain­able elec­tric air­craft is expect­ed to achieve 40% sav­ings in our oper­a­tional costs, and open our ser­vice to new des­ti­na­tions. With Elec­tra’s eSTOL plane, we look for­ward to offer­ing our cus­tomers unpar­al­leled urban and region­al air mobil­i­ty in cities such as São Paulo, Bogotá, San­ti­a­go de Chile or Ciu­dad de Mex­i­co – all at a frac­tion of the cost of a heli­copter ride.”

Sky­portz is devel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive infra­struc­ture net­work in Aus­tralia to attract and sup­port future urban and region­al air mobil­i­ty ser­vices. Its MoU with Elec­tra includes a Pur­chase Agree­ment for up to 100 Elec­tra eSTOL air­craft, enabling the com­pa­ny and its oper­at­ing part­ners to direct­ly con­nect city cen­tres or dis­persed logis­tics facil­i­ties and deliv­er car­go to remote regions. Sky­portz is explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in Aus­tralia for ear­ly tri­als lever­ag­ing Elec­tra’s full-scale tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor, which enters flight test­ing in the US in 2022.

Clem New­ton-Brown, Founder and CEO of Sky­portz, said: “At Sky­portz we are assem­bling the infra­struc­ture back­bone to make Aus­tralia even more attrac­tive for inno­v­a­tive air­craft builders look­ing for a place to tri­al real world use cas­es. We look for­ward to intro­duc­ing Elec­tra to our prop­er­ty, freight and logis­tics part­ners and devel­op­ing some viable appli­ca­tions for their air­craft.”

And back in August 2021, Elec­tra and Bris­tow Group signed an MOU under which the two firms will coop­er­ate on the tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as well as mar­ket­ing of Elec­tra’s eSTOL air­craft, with an expect­ed deliv­ery of 50 eSTOL planes. The com­pa­nies will explore new mar­kets for Bris­tow oper­a­tions using the air­craft focused on mid­dle mile logis­tics for retail dis­tri­b­u­tion and pas­sen­ger ser­vice.

John S. Lang­ford, Founder and CEO of Electra.aero, added: “These strate­gic agree­ments go beyond the tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing of the air­craft. They chart the entire ecosys­tem need­ed for its suc­cess­ful oper­a­tion, ground sup­port, and cus­tomer use that togeth­er val­i­date the com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty and mar­ket con­fi­dence in our eSTOL air­craft.”