Dufour Aerospace announce development cooperation for its Aero3 eVTOL aircraft with Swiss Air-Rescue Rega

Dufour Aero­space has announced a devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion for the air ambu­lance ver­sion of its Aero3 eVTOL air­craft with Swiss Air-Res­cue Rega – the lead­ing Swiss air res­cue organ­i­sa­tion.

The com­pa­ny has said its Aero3 is the first of its kind to fea­ture a tilt-wing design with excep­tion­al space, load, and range for emer­gency med­ical ser­vices (EMS) and patient trans­port. The full spec­i­fi­ca­tions of Aero3 was revealed last month and it is an exten­sion of the Aero2, a small­er, unmanned ver­sion of the air­craft which was first test flown by Dufour Aero­space in 2020.

Dur­ing prod­uct devel­op­ment, Rega will sup­port Dufour Aero­space with know-how on med­ical and avi­a­tion equip­ment and will advise on oper­a­tional stan­dards and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Dufour Aero­space offers Rega the oppor­tu­ni­ty to influ­ence the devel­op­ment of the Aero3 at an ear­ly stage.

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, CEO of Dufour Aero­space, said: “The col­lab­o­ra­tion with Rega will chal­lenge Dufour Aero­space and advance our prod­uct devel­op­ment. They are a glob­al leader in air res­cue with the high­est stan­dards. Through this part­ner­ship, we will bet­ter under­stand and meet the needs of our cus­tomers.

“The Aero3 will meet the require­ments for demand­ing patient trans­port, com­bin­ing ver­ti­cal take-off with suf­fi­cient load, high speed and range. Aero3 will be more effi­cient, less expen­sive and qui­eter than today’s heli­copters and will inte­grate seam­less­ly with exist­ing infra­struc­ture and sys­tems.”

Swiss Air-Res­cue Rega pro­vides rapid and pro­fes­sion­al med­ical assis­tance from the air for peo­ple in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions. To ful­fil its mis­sion, Rega reach­es every loca­tion in its oper­a­tional area in Switzer­land with­in a 15-minute flight by res­cue heli­copter. This is made pos­si­ble by thir­teen oper­a­tional bases spread through­out the coun­try.

With three of its own ambu­lance jets, Rega also flies sick or injured peo­ple from abroad back to their home coun­try. As a pri­vate, non-prof­it foun­da­tion, it acts inde­pen­dent­ly of the state or finan­cial inter­ests and is sup­port­ed by more than 3.6 mil­lion patrons, whose annu­al con­tri­bu­tions keep Rega in the air for the ben­e­fit of the Swiss pop­u­la­tion.

With this new part­ner­ship, both Rega and Dufour Aero­space believe this coop­er­a­tion rep­re­sents an impor­tant step towards mak­ing the advances of advanced air mobil­i­ty avail­able to patients. They have also signed a cor­re­spond­ing let­ter of intent, with fur­ther details of con­tent and tim­ing to be revealed soon.

Ernst Kohler, Rega CEO, added: “Con­tin­u­ous devel­op­ment is in Rega’s DNA. The Aero3 is an excep­tion­al­ly inter­est­ing air­craft, and we want to sup­port its devel­op­ment with our expe­ri­ence from 70 years of HEMS oper­a­tion.”

Dufour Aero­space relies on the tilt-wing prin­ci­ple: Aero3 will take off and lands ver­ti­cal­ly in the small­est space like a heli­copter, but flies as fast and eco­nom­i­cal­ly as an air­plane.

While the pro­pellers are elec­tri­cal­ly dri­ven, hybrid ele­ments — such as con­ven­tion­al tur­bine or fuel cells — ensure a suf­fi­cient­ly long range. In addi­tion to the Aero3, Dufour Aero­space’s Aero2, an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle also based on the tilt-wing prin­ci­ple.