Bristow secures early delivery for five Elroy Air Chaparral aircraft

Bris­tow Group has reserved ear­ly deliv­ery slots for five of Elroy Air’s Chap­ar­ral hybrid-elec­tric VTOL car­go sys­tems, hav­ing signed a let­ter of intent to pre-order 100 last year.

The Chap­ar­ral will be the first of its kind VTOL air­craft ded­i­cat­ed to car­go move­ment to be intro­duced into Bristow’s air­craft fleet. Bris­tow plans to use the Chap­ar­ral inter­na­tion­al­ly to move time-sen­si­tive car­go for logis­tics, health­care, and ener­gy appli­ca­tions.

Bris­tow exec­u­tive VP Dave Stepanek said: “There is increas­ing demand for the move­ment of time-sen­si­tive car­go for logis­tics, health care and ener­gy appli­ca­tions. Secur­ing these ear­ly deliv­ery posi­tions under­scores our com­mit­ment to lead­ing the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket and builds on our 75+ year lega­cy of ver­ti­cal lift inno­va­tions.

“At Bris­tow, we’re excit­ed to ush­er in a new era of ver­ti­cal lift oper­a­tions and col­lab­o­rate with Elroy Air to meet the emerg­ing mar­ket of express ship­ping car­go in cities and regions with­out rely­ing on exist­ing or new air­port infra­struc­ture.”

The Chap­ar­ral is a ‘lift plus cruise’ hybrid eVTOL car­go air­craft that lever­ages the ben­e­fits of both con­ven­tion­al tur­bines and elec­tric propul­sion for autonomous oper­a­tion and longer range.

Engi­neered with an advanced car­bon com­pos­ite air­frame, Chap­ar­ral can be con­fig­ured to ship inside a 40-foot con­tain­er or in air­craft for rapid glob­al deploy­ment.

Elroy Air has intro­duced advanced mod­u­lar car­go pods that com­ple­ment the Chaparral’s capa­bil­i­ties. The pods are pre-loaded by ground per­son­nel and autonomous­ly retrieved by the Chap­ar­ral air­craft before take­off.

Upon arrival at the deliv­ery loca­tion, the air­craft autonomous­ly low­ers the pod to the ground. The Chap­ar­ral air­craft then retrieves the next pre-packed pod, cre­at­ing a seam­less bi-direc­tion­al con­vey­or belt through the sky.

Elroy Air VP of busi­ness devel­op­ment and strat­e­gy Kofi Asante added: “Get­ting to this stage with reserved deliv­ery posi­tions secured with deposits under­scores our rela­tion­ship with Bris­tow and we are extreme­ly pleased to be at this stage in devel­op­ment.

“Bristow’s exper­tise is a strong cat­a­lyst for bring­ing new air­craft like ours to the mar­ket. Their rotor­craft exper­tise, glob­al foot­print, and inno­v­a­tive mind­set have made them a strong part­ner and we are excit­ed for the next chap­ter togeth­er. We look for­ward to see­ing the Chap­ar­ral oper­ate inter­na­tion­al­ly as part of the Bris­tow fleet.”

Last week, Bris­tow boss­es met with Scot­tish Tory leader Dou­glas Ross to dis­cuss con­cepts for elec­tric heli­copter flights and how Scot­land could lead the way for more envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly air trav­el by 2030.