Aviation Safety Resources acquires Pioneer Aerospace, with new company aiming to be key player in UAM market

Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Resources (ASR) has reached an agree­ment with Safran Elec­tri­cal & Pow­er to acquire Pio­neer Aero­space. The joint com­pa­ny will be known as ASR-Pio­neer and aims to become a sig­nif­i­cant play­er in the urban air mobil­i­ty and para­chute indus­tries.

With loca­tions in Mil­ton, Flori­da; Colum­bia, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and Bloom­field, Con­necti­cut, Pio­neer Aero­space man­u­fac­tures para­chutes, pay­load deliv­ery sys­tems, and recov­ery sys­tems that sup­port spe­cialised tac­ti­cal, per­son­nel, car­go, human­i­tar­i­an, weapons, and space explo­ration pro­grammes.

The clos­ing of the deal is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed in the next sev­er­al days.

Speak­ing to eVTOL Insights, Lar­ry Williams, ASR CEO and Pres­i­dent told us more about the launch of the com­pa­ny and how this lat­est announce­ment rep­re­sents the next stage of its busi­ness plan.

He said: “ASR began look­ing at the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with recov­er­ing a vehi­cle dur­ing ver­ti­cal take­off and ver­ti­cal land­ing with no for­ward speed. Air­craft Emer­gency Para­chute Recov­ery sys­tems have been around for sev­er­al decades, but the prob­lem asso­ci­at­ed with the need for rapid recov­ery with no for­ward speed is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent prob­lem. We start­ed out in 2018, with the con­cept of try­ing to see if we could make the next gen­er­a­tion of air­craft recov­ery sys­tems.  From there, we began to pro­to­type over a peri­od of about 18 months.”

To date, ASR has been focused on test­ing and has qual­i­fied sev­en sys­tems, with Williams prais­ing ‘the incred­i­ble work’ that has been done to be able to recov­er a vehi­cle, even with no for­ward speed, with­in about 250–300 feet of alti­tude loss. A bench­mark that Williams says is sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter than what is cur­rent­ly in the mar­ket.

Pio­neer Aero­space has been around since the late 1930s, becom­ing the first com­pa­ny to use nylon for para­chutes and going on to devel­op high­ly tech­ni­cal sys­tems. The acqui­si­tion has now allowed ASR to meet the grow­ing mar­ket demand and ben­e­fit from addi­tion­al sup­port to address key areas.

“The two things that we real­ly need­ed were more engi­neer­ing help, because it’s very dif­fi­cult to get peo­ple that know any­thing about engi­neer­ing para­chutes, and that we need­ed to scale,” Williams said.

“When we looked at Pio­neer Aero­space, they brought a world class engi­neer­ing group to the table locat­ed in Con­necti­cut and real­ly teamed per­fect­ly with us. When we looked at scal­ing, we picked up a 106,000 square foot pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Mis­sis­sip­pi, with 85–90 peo­ple and 1,800 sewing machines. We now have the capa­bil­i­ty to respond to the mar­ket in any capac­i­ty.”

Com­ment­ing on the grow­ing demand in the advanced air mobil­i­ty mar­ket, Williams added: “If you look at the cur­rent list of com­pa­nies which are devel­op­ing these air­craft, we can meet the mar­ket demand both from an engi­neer­ing stand­point, which is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant, but also from a pro­duc­tion stand­point.”

“In addi­tion, we also have added a facil­i­ty that helps us with drop test­ing. If I’d start­ed out a cou­ple of years ago and writ­ten on a blank piece of paper what it was that we need­ed, Pio­neer Aero­space is exact­ly what we need­ed. We’re extra­or­di­nar­i­ly hap­py and very excit­ed.”

ASR opened a new 20,000 square-feet man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty and cor­po­rate office in 2019, expand­ed its Flori­da oper­a­tions with the acqui­si­tion of Strong Enter­pris­es in 2021, and now with the addi­tion of Pio­neer, ASR-Pio­neer is poised to meet the pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty demands of the AAM and oth­er grow­ing mar­kets.

Joined togeth­er with ASR, and from their com­bined five US-based loca­tions, ASR-Pio­neer will pro­duce lead­ing-edge tech­nolo­gies to address the para­chute, air­craft, defense, space, and AAM mar­kets into the future.

Con­clud­ing, Williams said: “I want to give cred­it to Pio­neer Aero­space and their employ­ees past and present, who devel­oped the exam­ple that we’re now build­ing on to become the aero­space com­pa­ny we envi­sioned when we start­ed this adven­ture. When our sys­tem gets used, it saves a life. Not many peo­ple get to have that feel­ing or meet some­one who has used your sys­tem to save their life. That’s an incred­i­ble priv­i­lege.”

In June 2021, ASR and AUTOFLUG signed a coop­er­a­tion agree­ment to look at devel­op­ing enhanced safe­ty sys­tems for unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles and eVTOL air­craft.

The agree­ment will also look to help increase pub­lic accep­tance of the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of inte­grat­ed emer­gency-recov­ery-and-res­cue sys­tems.  This will com­bine indi­vid­ual com­po­nents such as para­chute recov­ery sys­tems, crash resis­tant seat and har­ness sys­tems, cab­in struc­ture and land­ing gear to ensure max­i­mum safe­ty for pas­sen­gers in the air­craft.

Before that in Sep­tem­ber 2020, Bye Aero­space select­ed ASR to sup­ply whole air­craft recov­ery para­chutes sys­tems for its eFlyer2 air­craft.  Under the terms of the agree­ment, ASR will design, pro­to­type, test and deliv­er a recov­ery sys­tem specif­i­cal­ly for the all-elec­tric air­craft.