Metro Aviation Orders “Deposit-Backed, Up to 20 BETA Technologies VTOLs for Medical Transport”

U.S‑based Metro Avi­a­tion who oper­ates air ambu­lance ser­vices across Amer­i­ca by employ­ing a fleet of more than 150 mod­i­fied heli­copters, plans to add VTOLs air­craft to its arse­nal, reports a press release.

The com­pa­ny has placed a deposit-backed order for up to 20 ALIA VTOL air­craft man­u­fac­tured by BETA Tech­nolo­gies. Metro aims to inte­grate BETA’s Air­craft into its exist­ing net­work of air med­ical oper­a­tions, to car­ry out both inter-hos­pi­tal and scene trans­ports. 

Cur­rent­ly, Metro oper­ates 170 air­craft for 42 pro­grams across 27 states in the U.S. BETA’s ALIA will pro­vide anoth­er plat­form and with the aircraft’s high reli­a­bil­i­ty, low cost and ver­ti­cal capa­bil­i­ties, it offers increased mobil­i­ty and access to rur­al and urban geo­gra­phies with zero oper­a­tional emis­sions. 

Todd Stan­ber­ry, Metro’s VP and co-own­er, com­ment­ed, “We believe BETA has the supe­ri­or prod­uct in the e/VTOL space, and they are tak­ing the right approach to enter­ing the mar­ket.  This made the deci­sion easy for us. We are aligned with BETA in so many ways, from peo­ple, to safe­ty, to qual­i­ty, and we are thrilled about this new part­ner­ship.” 

Kyle Clark, BETA’s Founder and CEO, added, “We orig­i­nal­ly designed ALIA with organ and tis­sue trans­port in mind, so we’re excit­ed to com­ple­ment that mis­sion with Metro and its fam­i­ly of health­care providers across the coun­try.”

The release states, “Metro Avi­a­tion is a pio­neer in the indus­try. As the first to equip its entire fleet with night vision gog­gles and con­tin­u­ous­ly invest­ing in cut­ting-edge safe­ty tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing full-motion sim­u­la­tors, the com­pa­ny remains at the fore­front of inno­va­tion.”

It con­tin­ues, “Serv­ing top-tier med­ical pro­grams, Metro oper­ates in some of the most chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ments, from remote rur­al areas to moun­tain­ous regions with vary­ing ele­va­tions.”

Todd Stan­ber­ry

BETA has begun pro­duc­tion of its all-elec­tric air­craft includ­ing the ALIA VTOL and its con­ven­tion­al coun­ter­part, the ALIA CTOL. Both air­craft can car­ry up to 1,250 lbs of pay­load or five-pas­sen­gers and a pilot, depend­ing on the con­fig­u­ra­tion. 

The air­craft have land­ed at more than 90 air­ports and com­plet­ed deploy­ments with the USAF. BETA is also rolling out an elec­tric charg­ing net­work across the U.S. At present, there are 35 BETA charg­ers online along the East, West and Gulf Coasts, while 50 addi­tion­al sites are in devel­op­ment. 

The com­pa­ny is pro­duc­ing these air­craft and charg­ers in its close to 200,000 sq. ft pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Ver­mont. They will be deliv­ered to BETA’s grow­ing base of cus­tomers across car­go and logis­tics, med­ical, defence, and pas­sen­ger appli­ca­tions who include UPS, Air New Zealand, Unit­ed Ther­a­peu­tics, Bris­tow, Blade, LCI, Heli­jet, the U.S Depart­ment of Defense and now Metro Avi­a­tion. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.beta.team/

https://www.metroaviation.com

(Images: BETA/Metro Avi­a­tion)

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