Dufour Aerospace completes first phase of VTOL demonstrator flight testing

Swiss start-up Dufour Aero­space has com­plet­ed the first phase of flight test­ing of its VTOL demon­stra­tor air­craft.

Over the course of more than 550 test flights, the com­pa­ny said the air­craft has demon­strat­ed ‘a high degree of sta­bil­i­ty and con­trol in all con­di­tions, includ­ing tran­si­tions from hov­er to cruise and back again’.

Inspired by Canadair’s pio­neer­ing work fifty years ago with the CL-84, the com­pa­ny added that its research has shown that tilt-wing con­vert­ible air­craft offer a high degree of safe­ty and effi­cien­cy.

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, CEO of Dufour Aero­space, said: “I’m proud that the team has been able to build on the elec­tric propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy and flight test process­es we pio­neered with aEro 1. We now have sol­id expe­ri­ence with both manned elec­tric fixed-wing and eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy. As a heli­copter res­cue pilot, I’m look­ing for­ward to bring­ing these togeth­er.”

Felix Rubin, Lead Engi­neer for Aero­dy­nam­ics at Dufour Aero­space, added: “At larg­er scales, slip­stream air­flows over tilt­ing wings become more tur­bu­lent and hard­er to pre­dict, and care is need­ed to ensure that the air­craft remains sta­ble dur­ing tran­si­tion.

“With this large-scale unmanned air­craft, we’ve now been able to demon­strate that we can achieve that sta­bil­i­ty at high Reynolds num­bers.”

Dufour Aero­space is build­ing the aEro eVTOL, which it says will take pas­sen­gers from their doorstep to near­ly any­where you want, more than five times faster than a car, but at the same cost-per-kilo­me­tre

By using the air­craft, it says you can trav­el from Zurich Air­port to its home base in Zer­matt in just 30 min­utes, instead of more than three hours it takes by train or car.

Jas­mine Kent, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer at Dufour Aero­space, added: “From our sim­u­la­tions, we expect­ed that our pro­pri­etary tilt-wing con­trol sys­tem, devel­oped over the last two years in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ETH Zurich, would per­form well. But it’s encour­ag­ing to see that its per­for­mance and sta­bil­i­ty exceed­ed our expec­ta­tions.”

For more infor­ma­tion about Dufour Aero­space’s air­craft, vis­it www.dufour.aero