AYR Logistics to purchase up to 100 of Elroy Air’s Chaparral VTOL aircraft to support its humanitarian logistics efforts

Elroy Air has part­nered with AYR Logis­tics to devel­op an autonomous aer­i­al car­go deliv­ery ser­vice for human­i­tar­i­an use. The announce­ment was made at the Dubai Air Show and includes the com­mit­ment by AYR to pur­chase up to 100 of Elroy Air’s Chap­ar­ral air­craft to expand its human­i­tar­i­an logis­tics busi­ness.

Chap­ar­ral is Elroy Air’s VTOL aer­i­al car­go plat­form. It is a tran­si­tion­ing “lift + cruise” VTOL air­craft with sep­a­rate ver­ti­cal and cruise flight lift fans and a hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train for long-range mis­sion capa­bil­i­ties. The Chap­ar­ral can car­ry 300–500lbs of car­go more than 300 miles.

Elroy Air has devel­oped light­weight, aero­dy­nam­ic mod­u­lar car­go pods that can be pre-loaded by ground per­son­nel and picked up by the air­craft before take­off. At the deliv­ery loca­tion, the car­go pod is low­ered to the ground and released after the sys­tem has land­ed. The Chap­ar­ral sys­tem can retrieve anoth­er pre-packed pod and trans­port the pod to its next des­ti­na­tion, cre­at­ing a bi-direc­tion­al con­vey­or belt through the sky.

The company’s solu­tions will help to expand deliv­ery loca­tions and reduce time­frames, pro­vide imme­di­ate aid and relief in dis­as­ter and fire fight­ing sit­u­a­tions, as well as rapid autonomous resup­ply for troops in the field.

Elroy Air Co-founder and CEO David Mer­rill, said: “The human­i­tar­i­an deliv­er­ies that AYR Logis­tics per­forms rep­re­sent some of the most impor­tant, and chal­leng­ing logis­tics work in the world. We are hon­oured to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to part­ner with the AYR team and to pro­vide them with a new modal­i­ty of safe, reli­able aer­i­al deliv­ery for any envi­ron­ment. It’s an ide­al deploy­ment for our Chap­ar­ral sys­tems with a world-class part­ner.”

Elroy Air’s VP of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment and Strat­e­gy Kofi Asante, added: “Our team at Elroy Air is proud to sup­port the impor­tant human­i­tar­i­an work that AYR Logis­tics pro­vides to com­mu­ni­ties that are dif­fi­cult to reach due to unre­li­able road­ways, lim­it­ed air­port infra­struc­ture, and hos­tile envi­ron­ments.

“We’ve designed and built the Chap­ar­ral air­craft to safe­ly take off and land with­out any infra­struc­ture and to oper­ate autonomous­ly to deliv­er med­ical sup­plies, food, water and vac­cines more fre­quent­ly to the peo­ple who need it most.”

AYR is an air­craft own­er and oper­a­tor with more than two decades of hands-on expe­ri­ence pro­vid­ing logis­tics sup­port to the human­i­tar­i­an com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing the Unit­ed Nations, World Food Pro­gramme (WFP), Gov­ern­ments and NGOs.

The com­pa­ny has accu­mu­lat­ed more than 400,000 flight hours to-date and is cur­rent­ly an incum­bent provider of logis­tics and avi­a­tion ser­vices to Unit­ed Nations agen­cies and the US Depart­ment of State (DOS).

Speak­ing from the company’s head­quar­ters in Lon­don, Serge Sergeef, CEO of AYR Logis­tics, said: “We are very excit­ed to be work­ing with Elroy Air as their Human­i­tar­i­an Part­ners. Our air­craft need to oper­ate in incred­i­bly chal­leng­ing and aus­tere con­di­tions, fre­quent­ly with­out basic air­port infra­struc­ture, so we are very par­tic­u­lar about the equip­ment we use.

“We need high­ly-effi­cient and cost-effec­tive air­craft with excel­lent dis­patch reli­a­bil­i­ty that pro­vide 24-hour, all-weath­er oper­a­tions and per­form ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing with pin­point accu­ra­cy. We believe Elroy Air will pro­vide us with that capa­bil­i­ty. For us, these Car­go-UAVs are herald­ing a new era in logis­tics and will undoubt­ed­ly become the new work­horse for human­i­tar­i­an agen­cies.”

Stephen Lyons, Chief Devel­op­ment Offi­cer at AYR Logis­tics, added: “The Elroy Air Chap­ar­ral ticks all the box­es for us in terms of costs, safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal foot­print. This air­craft will pro­vide a very effi­cient plat­form for our human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tions and capac­i­ty build­ing projects and is ide­al­ly suit­ed to oper­at­ing in remote loca­tions with­out infra­struc­ture or ground sup­port.

“We see the Chap­ar­ral as an essen­tial part of our future oper­a­tions, deliv­er­ing crit­i­cal food, shel­ter, med­ical sup­plies, vac­cines and equip­ment direct­ly to those affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.”