Dufour Aerospace’s Aero2 and Aero3 to support Copenhagen Helicopter and Copenhagen Air Taxi’s sustainable transport plan in Denmark

Copen­hagen Heli­copter and its part­ner Copen­hagen Air­Taxi — both based at Den­mark’s Roskilde Air­port — have signed a let­ter of intent with Dufour Aero­space for a con­di­tion­al order to pur­chase its Aero2 UAV and Aero3 air­craft.

The aim of this part­ner­ship is to strength­en Copen­hagen Heli­copter and Copen­hagen Air Tax­i’s ini­tia­tives to intro­duce envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and effi­cient trans­porta­tion in Den­mark. Both com­pa­nies also plan to intro­duce this trans­port into the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries of Ger­many, Swe­den and Nor­way.

Dufour’s Aero2 UAV is designed for car­go and aer­i­al work, while the Aero3 is specif­i­cal­ly for pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion.

Hen­rik Ben­dix, co-founder of Copen­hagen Heli­copter, said: “With Dufour’s eight-seater Aero3 elec­tric hybrid air­craft, we want to build on this ini­tia­tive and extend the pos­si­bil­i­ties to the remain­ing rur­al areas of Den­mark, includ­ing many of its small islands, where con­struct­ing an air­field is either dis­tant or not fea­si­ble. Our goal is to cre­ate afford­able and swift con­nec­tiv­i­ty that is acces­si­ble to all.”

The aim is to estab­lish a route between Odense and pos­si­bly oth­er parts of the south­ern Funen arch­i­pel­ago with the Aero2 for car­go pur­pos­es by 2026, ini­tial­ly on a tri­al basis. This will serve as a learn­ing process for the oper­a­tion and main­te­nance of Dufour’s tiltwing air­craft.

Once the equiv­a­lent but larg­er 8‑seater Aero3 is ready in 2030, Copen­hagen Heli­copter plan to expand the ser­vice to include pas­sen­ger trans­port in this region and beyond.

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, CEO and co-founder of Dufour Aero­space, said: “Effi­cien­cy, safe­ty and oper­a­tional ver­sa­til­i­ty are key to pro­vid­ing our cus­tomers with a use­ful prod­uct. In an area with huge geo­graph­i­cal obsta­cles, these air­craft have the poten­tial to change the trans­porta­tion set­up of a coun­try.

“This is true for Aero2 in uncrewed crit­i­cal car­go appli­ca­tions and for Aero3 in crewed avi­a­tion. These air­craft will make con­nec­tiv­i­ty and logis­tics dra­mat­i­cal­ly sim­pler, more eco­log­ic and cheap­er than today, and Den­mark is an ide­al place for this.”

Aero2 can trans­port crit­i­cal car­go such as med­ical sup­plies of up to 40 kilograms/88 pounds in medi­um- to long-range dis­tances. The manned Aero3, fea­tur­ing a spa­cious cab­in with eight seats and large doors, is the next air­craft in devel­op­ment by Dufour Aero­space.

Mar­tin Winther Ander­sen, co-founder and CEO of Copen­hagen Heli­copter, added: “With­in Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, we focus on air­craft that can devel­op pub­lic trans­porta­tion in a third dimen­sion, that are elec­tric in the future, have a short charg­ing time and can oper­ate in all weath­er con­di­tions. Dufour’s Aero3 is one of few air­craft that can meet all these require­ments with the proven tiltwing design.

“In addi­tion to elec­tric flight, it also has the option to fly as a hybrid. A small com­bus­tion engine run­ning on Sus­tain­able Avi­a­tion Fuel (SAF) can pro­vide elec­tric pow­er onboard and a range of up to 1,000 km, giv­ing us new oppor­tu­ni­ties to look at our neigh­bour­ing coun­tries and serve parts of the coun­try where charg­ing infra­struc­ture can be a chal­lenge.”