Spright and Avtrain sign formal agreement to bring pilot training and operator certification to Shannon, Ireland

Spright and Avtrain announced this week at Farn­bor­ough Air­show, in the pres­ence of An Táin­iste Leo Varadakar, the Irish Min­is­ter for Enter­prise, Trade and Employ­ment, a signed Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) to part­ner for EASA pilot and oper­a­tor train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, reports a press release. This col­lab­o­ra­tion will take place at the Future Mobil­i­ty Cam­pus Ire­land (FMCI), locat­ed in Shan­non.

The release states, “The reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight of the project will be under the remit of the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty for the grant of their EASA oper­a­tor cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The planned project will com­mence with first flights planned for the Fall of 2022 at FMCI, based at Shan­non Air­port, Coun­ty Clare.”

The col­lab­o­ra­tion is to include cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of pilots, unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems (UAS), use-case proof of mar­ket, busi­ness devel­op­ment, and air­space util­i­sa­tion.

Steven Fly­nn, Direc­tor of Strate­gic Projects at Spright, commented,“The future vision for the UAS indus­try is to bring green­er, more effi­cient solu­tions that solve sup­ply chain issues around the globe. This project promis­es to advance Ire­land as a tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tor lead­ing the world for­ward.”

Julie Gar­land, Founder and CEO of Avtrain, said, “Yet again, Ire­land is at the fore­front in Europe lead­ing the way in the UAS indus­try. The col­lab­o­ra­tion between Spright, Avtrain and FMCI, along with oth­er strate­gic indus­try part­ners, will push the bound­aries to the next lev­el and Ire­land will be at the fore­front of inno­va­tion and excel­lence with­in this devel­op­ing sec­tor.”

Russ Vick­ers of FMCI added, “This project is a prime exam­ple of our vision for a col­lab­o­ra­tive ecosys­tem for UAS in Ire­land. We are delight­ed that Spright and Avtrain have cho­sen us as their home for col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

Foot­note

Spright, a divi­sion of US based Air Meth­ods, is an unmanned aeromed­ical solu­tions provider cre­at­ed to “save and improve lives”, by improv­ing health­care access and min­imis­ing sup­ply chal­lenges.

Spright is cre­at­ing a drone-based, health­care-spe­cif­ic deliv­ery net­work for those who are impact­ed by a lack of imme­di­ate or time­ly access to health­care resources. When these short­ages impact the avail­abil­i­ty of blood prod­ucts, med­i­cines, diag­nos­tics or small med­ical devices, the con­se­quences can be dire. The solu­tion is a flex­i­ble, rapid dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work designed with 21st-cen­tu­ry unmanned tech­nol­o­gy.

Avtrain is Europe’s “lead­ing drone pilot and oper­a­tor train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion organ­i­sa­tion,” offer­ing con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for large scale projects. Avtrain is an EASA recog­nised enti­ty, issued by the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, for the grant of Open Cat­e­go­ry A2 and all Spe­cif­ic Cat­e­go­ry Autho­ri­sa­tions, Dec­la­ra­tions and Light UAS oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate (LUC).

FMCI is the first com­plete devel­op­ment cen­tre and full-scale test bed in Ire­land, based in the Shan­non Free­zone and oper­at­ing across Europe. The facil­i­ty focus­es on com­pre­hen­sive mobil­i­ty tech­nolo­gies that span both ground (autonomous dri­ving, micro-mobil­i­ty, smart cities, V2X com­mu­ni­ca­tions) and air (unmanned drones, eVTOL, AAM, UTM) uses.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.gospright.com

https://avtrain.aero

https://futuremobilityireland.ie

(Top pic: (L‑R) Steven Fly­nn, Direc­tor of Strate­gic  Pro­grams, Spright (div. of Air Meth­ods), Rus­sell Vick­ers, CEO FMCI, Julie Gar­land, CEO Avtrain, Tom Kel­ly, Divi­sion­al Man­ag­er Indus­tri­al and Life Sci­ences, Enter­prise Ire­land and An Tánaiste and Min­is­ter for Enter­prise, Trade and Employ­ment Leo Varad­kar TD)