FAA Approves Airworthiness Criteria for Wingcopter in US Type Certification

The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) has approved Spe­cial Class Air­wor­thi­ness Cri­te­ria for the Wing­copter 198 US unmanned air­craft, which defines tech­no­log­i­cal require­ments under title 14, Code of Fed­er­al Reg­u­la­tions that must be met to have an air­craft type-cer­ti­fied for reg­u­lar com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in the US.

The Wing­copter 198 was devel­oped to lever­age over five years of oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence in var­i­ous geo­graph­i­cal set­tings, from the Arc­tics to the Mid­dle East­ern desert, and from remote islands in the South Pacif­ic to San Diego Bay in the US.

Since apply­ing for the Spe­cial Class Type Cer­tifi­cate in March 2020, Wing­copter of Ger­many has col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with the FAA, and the approval allows Wing­copter to focus more devel­op­ment on what the FAA deems nec­es­sary to receive cer­ti­fi­ca­tion quick­ly and effi­cient­ly.

Wing­copter Co-Founder and CEO Tom Plüm­mer said: “We are proud to be among the first deliv­ery drone com­pa­nies world­wide to get Air­wor­thi­ness Cri­te­ria approved by the FAA.

“This is a very impor­tant mile­stone for us, not only in our Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Process in the US, but also for our inter­na­tion­al expan­sion efforts and for achiev­ing our vision of build­ing logis­ti­cal high­ways in the sky.”

Once type-cer­ti­fied, Wing­copter will be able to fly con­ven­tion­al routes through air­space and over pop­u­lat­ed areas, ulti­mate­ly pro­vid­ing the basis for scal­ing com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery oper­a­tions across the US.

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is also expect­ed to have a pos­i­tive impact on Wingcopter’s fur­ther cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts, includ­ing Agên­cia Nacional de Avi­ação Civ­il (ANAC) in Brazil and the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB).

In Feb­ru­ary, Wing­copter and Spright, a sub­sidiary of lead­ing Amer­i­can air med­ical ser­vice provider Air Meth­ods, announced a new com­mer­cial agree­ment worth over $16 mil­lion.

Spright will acquire a fleet of Wing­copter 198s to meet the increas­ing demand for med­ical drone deliv­ery solu­tions through­out the Unit­ed States, mak­ing Wing­copter the exclu­sive provider of fixed wing eVTOLs to Spright for use with­in the US.

In turn, Spright became the exclu­sive provider of Main­te­nance, Repair and Over­haul (MRO) ser­vices for the Wing­copter 198 to third par­ties in the US, thanks to its infra­struc­ture across the coun­try.

Last Decem­ber, Wing­copter secured invest­ment from Syn­er­jet, a lead­ing busi­ness avi­a­tion spe­cial­ist in Latin Amer­i­ca with oper­a­tions in Brazil, Chile, Colom­bia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Pana­ma.

Syn­er­jet made the invest­ment short­ly after join­ing Wingcopter’s Autho­rised Part­ner Pro­gram, which allows com­pa­nies to act as a dis­trib­u­tor and local tech­ni­cal sup­port provider for the Wing­copter 198.