Dufour Aerospace and Areion partnership extension includes purchase of 40 Aero2 drones and up to 100 additional aircraft

Dufour Aero­space has renewed its part­ner­ship with Areion, the U.S. drone pio­neer and suc­ces­sor to Spright. This announce­ment includes the pur­chase by Areion of 40 Aero2 drones, with options for an addi­tion­al 100 air­craft. 

Dufour and Spright pre­vi­ous­ly announced this largest-ever pur­chase of civil­ian drones in 2023. Areion will con­tin­ue busi­ness devel­op­ment activ­i­ties with Dufour Aero­space’s tilt-wing Aero2 drone, focus­ing on crit­i­cal goods trans­port and oth­er logis­ti­cal appli­ca­tions.

The announce­ment was made at the UP.Summit, an invi­ta­tion-only gath­er­ing of 300 of the world’s most inno­v­a­tive minds rethink­ing the future of trans­porta­tion, tak­ing place this year in Ben­tonville, Arkansas.

Sascha Hard­eg­ger, CEO of Dufour Aero­space, said: “We are pleased to con­tin­ue our part­ner­ship with Areion. Our first prod­uct, the Aero2, will soon enter pre-series pro­duc­tion with a view to com­mer­cial deliv­er­ies in 2026, and we believe Areion is the right part­ner to expand our foot­print in the Unit­ed States.

“As a tes­ta­ment to the promise of this part­ner­ship, we are hon­oured Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, our co-founder, was invit­ed to the UP.Summit. It is a key gath­er­ing of vision­ar­ies on the next phase of flight oper­a­tions, and we are hap­py that Aero2 will be on dis­play. Investors will see what’s pos­si­ble with our inno­v­a­tive tilt-wing plat­form.” 

Areion UAS is the new drone divi­sion of Legion­air Tac­ti­cal Logis­tics, revived to help solve for many of the tough­est chal­lenges fac­ing com­mu­ni­ties across North Amer­i­ca.

This inno­v­a­tive, drone-based solu­tion lever­ages emerg­ing aero­nau­ti­cal tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate oper­a­tional solu­tions that can be imple­ment­ed local­ly. Based in Chan­dler, Ari­zona, Areion was born from an avi­a­tion her­itage ded­i­cat­ed to safe and effi­cient oper­a­tions.

Areion Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Tyler Kennedy, added: “Dufour Aero­space has devel­oped an impres­sive mul­ti-role plat­form for unmanned air mobil­i­ty that will allow us to meet our future needs.

“With today’s announce­ment, we demon­strate our con­tin­u­ing com­mit­ment to their vision and to their tech­no­log­i­cal approach, in which we are proud to be a part­ner in the U.S. and abroad.”

Dufour Aero­space devel­ops effi­cient and sus­tain­able air­craft for car­go trans­porta­tion, logis­tics and pub­lic safe­ty. It uses dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion and a hybrid mod­ule to meet today’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty and medi­um-sized drone mar­ket require­ments.

The com­pa­ny was incor­po­rat­ed in 2017 and has its head­quar­ters in Visp, Switzer­land, with a design office and flight test­ing facil­i­ties in Düben­dorf, Switzer­land. Dufour Aero­space employs more than 50 employ­ees.