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SAMAD Aerospace partners with Aerosud Aviation to develop Starling Cargo eVTOL aircraft and expands its design team

SAMAD Aero­space has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing agree­ment with Aero­sud Avi­a­tion for the devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­ture of its Star­ling Car­go eVTOL air­craft.

The Star­ling Car­go air­craft will be remote­ly pilot­ed with auto pilot capa­bil­i­ty and have a cruis­ing speed of 83 knots, flight ceil­ing of 10,000 feet and a range of up to 117nm. The elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing air­craft will enable flex­i­ble point to point air car­go of up to 60 kg pay­load.

SAMAD Aero­space has already seen inter­est in the Star­ling Car­go air­craft from a num­ber of indus­try sec­tors that need to tran­sit high val­ue car­go. These include oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions, gem­stone min­ing com­pa­nies, med­ical logis­tics and emer­gency response com­pa­nies. 

Dr. Seyed Mohseni, CEO of SAMAD Aero­space, said: “We look for­ward to work­ing with Aero­sud Avi­a­tion to bring our eVTOL Star­ling Car­go air­craft to mar­ket for deliv­ery dur­ing the next cou­ple of years. The Star­ling Car­go air­craft will make air car­go faster, green­er and more sus­tain­able.”

Aero­sud Avi­a­tion is a South African aero­space engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny spe­cial­is­ing in com­mer­cial aerostruc­ture part design and man­u­fac­tur­ing for inter­na­tion­al Tier One sup­pli­ers.

The Star­ling Car­go air­craft will also be utilised to deliv­er human­i­tar­i­an crit­i­cal car­go of food, med­i­cine and equip­ment to often remote regions of the world with under­de­vel­oped or dam­aged local infra­struc­ture.

Rob Jonkers, Direc­tor of Pro­grammes at Aero­sud Avi­a­tion, added: We look for­ward to work­ing with SAMAD Aero­space to bring to mar­ket this unique Star­ling Car­go eVTOL, which has par­tic­u­lar advan­tages in the South African and African con­text giv­en sparse infra­struc­ture to move car­go at medi­um to long dis­tance at speed.

“The flex­i­bil­i­ty of Star­ling Car­go oper­a­tions will bring a new dimen­sion to deliv­ery turn­around times coun­try and con­ti­nent wide”

In addi­tion to the part­ner­ship with Aero­sud Avi­a­tion, SAMAD Aero­space has also announced the appoint­ment of two air­craft design engi­neers.

Skif Dob­ney and Natasha Marples are recent grad­u­ates of Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty, with Dob­ney hav­ing already been work­ing part-time at SAMAD Aero­space to fit around his stud­ies.

He said: “Dur­ing my work place­ment at SAMAD Aero­space I assist­ed the engi­neer­ing team with par­tic­u­lar focus on the design of the fuse­lage. I am look­ing for­ward to work­ing along­side them as we con­tin­ue the devel­op­ment of theS­tar­ling jet air­craft and the elec­tric Star­ling Car­go air­craft.”

Marples, added: “I am very inter­est­ed in the design of air­frame sys­tems and sys­tems mod­el­ling, as well as work­ing with green­er solu­tions for avi­a­tion. In my new role at SAMAD Aero­space, I am look­ing for­ward to work­ing on the design of SAMAD Aerospace’s Star­ling jet air­craft.”

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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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