LCI commits to acquire up to 40 of Elroy Air’s Chaparral VTOL aircraft

Avi­a­tion com­pa­ny LCI has signed an agree­ment to acquire up to 40 of Elroy Air’s Chap­ar­ral VTOL air­craft.

Under the terms of the deposit-backed agree­ment, LCI — a sub­sidiary of Libra Group — will ini­tial­ly acquire 20 air­craft, with an option for a total of up to 40 units. The VTOL air­craft is cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment at Elroy Air’s facil­i­ty in San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia.

Jas­pal Jan­du, CEO of LCI, says: “This com­mit­ment for the pio­neer­ing Chap­ar­ral sys­tem will enable us to effi­cient­ly sup­port mis­sion crit­i­cal, remote logis­ti­cal work and social­ly respon­si­ble human­i­tar­i­an efforts around the world. It will do so in com­ple­ment with the wide-rang­ing capa­bil­i­ties of our exist­ing avi­a­tion fleet.”

“We have been impressed with Elroy Air’s vision and approach and look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with the team on a wide range of oppor­tu­ni­ties. This forms part of our wider advanced air mobil­i­ty strat­e­gy and will strength­en LCI’s posi­tion as a lead­ing provider of leas­ing, financ­ing and invest­ing solu­tions for this new and excit­ing mar­ket.”

The Chap­ar­ral is the first end-to-end autonomous VTOL car­go deliv­ery sys­tem. It is designed for aer­i­al trans­port of up to 500 lbs (225 kgs) of goods over a 300 nau­ti­cal mile range. This is enabled ini­tial­ly by a tur­bine-based hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train with dis­trib­uted elec­tri­cal propul­sion, and spe­cial­ly designed aero­dy­nam­ic mod­u­lar car­go pods.

The air­craft will com­ple­ment LCI’s exist­ing fleet of mod­ern heli­copters and fixed wing air­craft. In addi­tion, LCI and Libra Group, whose sub­sidiaries own and oper­ate assets in approx­i­mate­ly 60 coun­tries, plan to share com­mer­cial, finan­cial and end-user exper­tise with Elroy Air through well-estab­lished indus­try net­works.

Chap­ar­ral’s appli­ca­tions include safe, effi­cient and cost-effec­tive aer­i­al car­go trans­port for com­mer­cial logis­tics, dis­as­ter relief, fire­fight­ing and human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tions with­out risk to pilots or the need for air­port infra­struc­ture.

David Mer­rill, CEO and Co-Founder of Elroy Air, said: “We’re expe­ri­enc­ing an enthu­si­as­tic response to the Chap­ar­ral and its capa­bil­i­ties to serve as a key part of a safe, effi­cient, and capa­ble fleet of air­craft to respond in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, pro­tect pilots, and enable rapid logis­tics in a new and sus­tain­able way.

“Through our agree­ment with LCI, the Chap­ar­ral will be avail­able for financ­ing — enabling much broad­er access to the air­craft. We are proud that the Chap­ar­ral will now be part of LCI’s avi­a­tion fleet and look for­ward to pro­vid­ing aer­i­al car­go trans­port glob­al­ly.”

LCI main­tains a grow­ing, sus­tain­able, and future-focused fleet of young, mod­ern avi­a­tion assets, which are leased to major oper­a­tors and end-users around the world. Many are deployed on mis­sion crit­i­cal and social­ly respon­si­ble sec­tors such as Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vices (EMS), Search and Res­cue (SAR) and off­shore wind ener­gy.

George Logo­thetis, Chair­man and CEO of Libra Group, added: “We are proud of LCI’s part­ner­ship with Elroy Air, which fur­ther accel­er­ates the Chaparral’s entry into the glob­al mar­ket. Bridg­ing the present with the future requires nov­el part­ner­ships such as these where estab­lished indus­try lead­ers join with inno­va­tors to make par­a­digm-shift­ing tech­nolo­gies a real­i­ty.

“Our Group is com­mit­ted to lever­ag­ing our glob­al plat­form to catal­yse the uptake of sus­tain­able inno­va­tions across our six sec­tors, and we look for­ward to shar­ing many future-focused part­ner­ships to come.”