Dufour Aerospace brings in Sascha Hardegger as its new Chief Commercial Officer

Swiss start­up Dufour Aero­space has announced that Sascha Hard­eg­ger will join the team as Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer.

Hard­eg­ger arrives from Rega, the lead­ing Swiss Air-Res­cue ser­vice, where he worked as Head of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Head of Heli­copter Oper­a­tions Direc­tor of the Inno­va­tion Pro­gramme.

He start­ed Rega’s ambi­tious drone project in 2017, which aimed to devel­op a high­ly auto­mat­ed inter­ven­tion drone and mul­ti­ple sup­port appli­ca­tions ded­i­cat­ed to find­ing miss­ing per­sons in alpine areas.

Com­ment­ing on his new appoint­ment, Hard­eg­ger said: “I am look­ing for­ward to con­tribut­ing to such a ded­i­cat­ed and expe­ri­enced team. Pro­fes­sion­al avi­a­tion will see major changes in the com­ing years, and Dufour’s approach is the most com­pelling I have seen. It is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port such a promis­ing Swiss ini­tia­tive.”

After hav­ing com­plet­ed his stud­ies as polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty, Hard­eg­ger worked as a jour­nal­ist in for­eign mis­sions for the Swiss Army. He was also as a spokesper­son for the Fed­er­al Depart­ment of Jus­tice and Police in Bern before join­ing Rega.

Aside from work, he is also a pri­vate pilot for sin­gle engine planes, a glid­er and paraglid­ing pilot and flys remote-con­trolled heli­copters or drones.

Com­ment­ing on Hard­eg­ger’s appoint­ment, Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, CEO of Dufour Aero­space, added: “I am delight­ed that a leader with such a proven track record has agreed to sup­port Dufour Aero­space in a respon­si­ble man­age­ment role. He com­ple­ments our team per­fect­ly in every respect.”

Dufour Aero­space is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its aEro3 eVTOL for the med­ical sup­ply trans­porta­tion mar­ket. The large, manned tilt-wing air­craft has five to sev­en seats and Pfam­mat­ter and Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Jas­mine Kent spoke to eVTOL Insights about this project as part of our pod­cast series.