Air Taurus to lease five Pipistrel NUUVA V300 unmanned aircraft from Lobo Leasing

Lobo Leas­ing and Air Tau­rus, the Irish Group affil­i­ate of human­i­tar­i­an logis­tics spe­cial­ist AYR Logis­tics, have agreed a lease for five Pip­istrel Nuu­va V300 hybrid VTOL (hVTOL) unmanned car­go air­craft, the first five of 15 air­craft to be com­mit­ted to a lease cus­tomer under a part­ner­ship that was first announced last April.

Pip­istrel and Lobo Leas­ing sign part­ner­ship which includes order for 15 Nuu­va V300 hybrid VTOL air­craft

The lease is aligned with the Nuu­va V300 devel­op­ment pro­gram and tar­gets deliv­ery of the first units to Air Tau­rus between 2025 and 2026, a clear demon­stra­tion of the antic­i­pat­ed mar­ket demand for oper­at­ing lease solu­tions for advanced new-tech­nol­o­gy air­craft and the enthu­si­asm from investors for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the mar­ket through a lease man­ag­er.

Air Tau­rus will deploy the Nuu­va V300 air­craft in AYR’s glob­al human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tions, with the abil­i­ty to move crit­i­cal­ly need­ed car­go, includ­ing food and med­ical sup­plies, across areas with a lim­it­ed or degrad­ed ground infra­struc­ture.

The Nuu­va V300 is designed as a sus­tain­ably pow­ered car­go air­craft using a hybrid propul­sion sys­tem includ­ing elec­tric motors for ver­ti­cal lift and a fuel effi­cient, full author­i­ty dig­i­tal engine con­trol (FADEC) pow­er plant for cruise flight.

The NUUVA V300 cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment is planned to have a cruise speed of approx­i­mate­ly 120 knots with a car­go capac­i­ty of up to 300kg and max­i­mum range of 300km with reserves.

Lobo Leas­ing senior VP Gus­ta­vo Semer­aro said: “We are proud to con­tin­ue at the fore­front of this fast-devel­op­ing mar­ket by bring­ing a pio­neer­ing part­ner­ship to devel­op a finan­cial solu­tion to sup­port AYR’s cru­cial human­i­tar­i­an work.

“AYR is a respect­ed and expe­ri­enced oper­a­tor, and we great­ly appre­ci­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with them on final­is­ing a let­ter of intent (LOI). The V300 has the poten­tial to trans­form the human­i­tar­i­an avi­a­tion sec­tor by bring­ing an entire­ly new approach to the deliv­ery of long-stand­ing oper­a­tional require­ments”.

AYR chief devel­op­ment offi­cer Stephen Lyons added: “This marks an impor­tant step for­ward in our plans to intro­duce unmanned air­craft to the human­i­tar­i­an sec­tor. We are grate­ful to Lobo Leas­ing for its sup­port and the shared vision we have for the human­i­tar­i­an appli­ca­tion of unmanned air­craft.”

Air Tau­rus is a group affil­i­ate of AYR Logis­tics, a UK-based logis­tics and avi­a­tion ser­vices com­pa­ny with more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence in human­i­tar­i­an and peace­keep­ing logis­tics sup­port, and Air Tau­rus LLC, a Ukrain­ian heli­copter oper­a­tor which pro­vides heli­copter trans­port for human­i­tar­i­an and peace­keep­ing car­go and pas­sen­ger oper­a­tions, EMS, SAR and aer­i­al fire­fight­ing. Air Tau­rus Lim­it­ed focus­es on devel­op­ing and oper­at­ing Car­go Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tems for human­i­tar­i­an and com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in extreme and demand­ing envi­ron­ments.