Bristow Group Reserves 10 More Elroy Air Chaparral Aircraft

Bris­tow Group has expand­ed its ear­ly deliv­ery reser­va­tions for Elroy Air’s Chap­ar­ral autonomous car­go air­craft, secur­ing 10 addi­tion­al deliv­ery posi­tions and bring­ing its total to 15. The reser­va­tion builds on an ear­li­er agree­ment under which Bris­tow secured five ear­ly deliv­ery posi­tions and announced a pre-order for up to 100 Chap­ar­ral air­craft.

The com­pa­nies have been work­ing togeth­er for sev­er­al years to exam­ine poten­tial appli­ca­tions for autonomous car­go oper­a­tions.

The lat­est announce­ment fol­lows autonomous, uncrewed flight demon­stra­tions involv­ing the Chap­ar­ral in Houma, Louisiana, con­duct­ed as part of the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) and US Depart­ment of Transportation’s eVTOL Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (eIPP). The demon­stra­tions involved gov­ern­ment and indus­try part­ners and took place along­side Bristow’s heli­copter oper­a­tions.

Bris­tow said it is eval­u­at­ing poten­tial uses for the air­craft across com­mer­cial, gov­ern­ment and spe­cial-mis­sion oper­a­tions. Poten­tial appli­ca­tions include car­go and logis­tics mis­sions where access to con­ven­tion­al infra­struc­ture is lim­it­ed or where addi­tion­al flex­i­bil­i­ty and range are required.

David Stepanek, Exec­u­tive VP and Chief Trans­for­ma­tion Offi­cer at Bris­tow Group, said that the recent Louisiana demon­stra­tions “gave us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore how it could sup­port a range of trans­porta­tion and logis­tics mis­sions. It’s great to work with a part­ner like Elroy Air. We see poten­tial appli­ca­tions across com­mer­cial, gov­ern­ment ser­vices, and spe­cial mis­sion oper­a­tions and we’re con­tin­u­ing to eval­u­ate where tech­nolo­gies like this could cre­ate val­ue for our cus­tomers.”

The Chap­ar­ral is designed as an uncrewed ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing air­craft capa­ble of car­ry­ing more than 500 pounds of car­go. Elroy Air says it can oper­ate with­out run­ways or fixed land­ing infra­struc­ture and has a max­i­mum stat­ed range of up to 450 miles. The vehi­cle has a hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train that allows for reli­able long-range flight, and requires no charg­ing infra­struc­ture and logis­tics.

“We’re proud to have part­nered with the Bris­tow Group over the last few years and it was amaz­ing to be in Louisiana fly­ing along­side Bristow’s heli­copter fleet in one of the busiest air­ports for rotor­craft in the nation,” said Dr. Andrew Clare, CEO of Elroy Air. “We appre­ci­ate Bris­tow’s con­tin­ued con­fi­dence in the plat­form and look for­ward to sup­port­ing the eval­u­a­tion of Chap­ar­ral across a vari­ety of car­go and logis­tics mis­sions.”

The first pro­duc­tion air­craft is planned for lat­er this year, from exclu­sive Chap­ar­ral man­u­fac­tur­er Kratos Defense & Secu­ri­ty Solu­tions.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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