Wingcopter lands $16 million contract with Spright to help meet demand for medical drone deliveries in the USA

Wing­copter and Spright, a sub­sidiary of lead­ing Amer­i­can air med­ical ser­vice provider Air Meth­ods, have announced a new com­mer­cial agree­ment worth more than US$ 16 mil­lion.

As part of the deal Spright is acquir­ing a large fleet of Wingcopter’s new flag­ship deliv­ery drone, the Wing­copter 198, to meet the increas­ing demand for med­ical drone deliv­ery solu­tions through­out the Unit­ed States.

The con­tract makes Wing­copter the exclu­sive provider of fixed wing eVTOL deliv­ery drone tech­nol­o­gy to Spright for use with­in its Unit­ed States oper­a­tions. Spright, in turn, becomes the exclu­sive provider of Main­te­nance, Repair and Over­haul (MRO) for the Wing­copter 198 to third par­ties in the USA, an ide­al fit thanks to its avail­able infra­struc­ture across the coun­try.

Tom Plüm­mer, Co-founder and CEO of Wing­copter, said: “This mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar com­mer­cial agree­ment with Spright is a clear proof that the Wing­copter 198 has a per­fect prod­uct-mar­ket-fit. We are proud to enable large-scale drone deliv­ery across the Unit­ed States with this strong part­ner­ship.

“The pro­ject­ed com­pound annu­al growth rate (CAGR) for the drone deliv­ery mar­ket of more than 50 % to a total vol­ume of almost USD 40 bil­lion in 2030 under­lines the rapid adop­tion of eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy for last-mile logis­tics. We are hap­py to be at the fore­front of this fast-grow­ing mar­ket togeth­er with Spright.”

This agree­ment fur­ther strength­ens the strate­gic part­ner­ship between the two com­pa­nies that was announced in August 2021. Spright is close­ly sup­port­ing Wing­copter in its FAA UAS type-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process, lever­ag­ing the Spright team’s exten­sive avi­a­tion expe­ri­ence oper­at­ing both FAA 121 and 135 air car­ri­ers, its exist­ing Part 135 cer­tifi­cate (on-demand air ser­vice), SMS (Safe­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tem) Pro­gram, and long-stand­ing rela­tion­ships with the FAA.

Spright was launched in July of 2020 as the new drone divi­sion of Air Meth­ods to improve health­care access and min­i­mize sup­ply chal­lenges for cus­tomers across the US. To this end, Spright is cre­at­ing a drone-based, health­care-spe­cif­ic deliv­ery net­work in the Unit­ed States lever­ag­ing an exist­ing infra­struc­ture of more than 300 bases, serv­ing hun­dreds of hos­pi­tals, across 48 states in pre­dom­i­nant­ly rur­al areas.

Joseph Resnik, Pres­i­dent of Spright, adds: “We are for­tu­nate to have Wing­copter on board as our air­craft tech­nol­o­gy part­ner. With their indus­try-lead­ing eVTOL air­craft design, Wing­copter brings a lev­el of matu­ri­ty need­ed to address the com­plex and diverse demands of the US health­care mar­ket. We are con­fi­dent that our com­bined strengths will deliv­er inno­v­a­tive, time-sav­ing solu­tions to meet the needs of our cus­tomers and their com­mu­ni­ties.”

Spright is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Hutchin­son Region­al Health Sys­tem, in Hutchin­son, Kansas, for ini­tial tests, and plans to expand the ser­vice beyond Kansas with addi­tion­al strate­gic med­ical projects lat­er this year. The Wing­copter fleet will increase health­care access across rur­al and under­served com­mu­ni­ties by enabling the instant and on-demand deliv­ery of vital med­ical sup­plies, med­ica­tions, vac­cines, blood, and lab sam­ples, between med­ical facil­i­ties.

It will also improve qual­i­ty of care for patients due to faster turn-around time of lab sam­ples and more tar­get­ed treat­ments for patients. Final­ly, the elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered Wing­copter car­go drones will reduce the med­ical industry’s car­bon foot­print, con­tribut­ing to green­er and more sus­tain­able sup­ply chains with faster and more pre­dictable deliv­ery times.