Overair to partner with Bristow Group on the development of its Butterfly eVTOL, includes pre-order for up to 50 aircraft

Overair has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with Bris­tow Group, which includes an pre-order for 20 to 50 of Overair’s But­ter­fly eVTOL air­craft.

Both com­pa­nies will now work togeth­er to devel­op an oper­a­tions devel­op­ment frame­work focus­ing on vehi­cle design con­sid­er­a­tions, key per­for­mance para­me­ters, FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and flight plan­ning best prac­tices.

Oth­er areas of focus will include data shar­ing for improve­ment of flight oper­a­tions, con­nect­ed vehi­cle and health mon­i­tor­ing strate­gies, con­fig­u­ra­tion and main­te­nance pro­to­cols, infra­struc­ture, ground sup­port oper­a­tions, con­nect­ed fleet man­age­ment and gov­ern­ment affairs and pro­mo­tion of eVTOL oper­a­tions.

Ben Tign­er, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Overair, said: “Bris­tow’s decades of ver­ti­cal lift expe­ri­ence will great­ly enhance But­ter­fly­’s path to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. Their oper­at­ing insight, com­bined with our devel­op­ment and exe­cu­tion of the But­ter­fly pro­gram, will posi­tion But­ter­fly to serve Bris­tow as a valu­able work­horse on high-den­si­ty routes. We’re elat­ed to learn from Bris­tow’s prac­ti­cal exper­tise and ulti­mate­ly deliv­er an air­craft opti­mised for their use cas­es.”

Bris­tow, one of the world’s largest and most expe­ri­enced heli­copter oper­a­tors, plans to use the unique attrib­ut­es of these eVTOL air­craft to help reduce its car­bon foot­print.

The com­pa­ny under­stands the ben­e­fits of a var­ied fleet and intends to diver­si­fy its exist­ing oper­a­tions with But­ter­fly and oth­er eVTOLs for com­mer­cial air taxi routes in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. Notably, of the vehi­cles Bris­tow is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing, But­ter­fly is the only air­craft with a vec­tored thrust con­fig­u­ra­tion.

Chris Brad­shaw, Bris­tow’s pres­i­dent and CEO, said: “Our MOU with Overair allows us to advance our lead­er­ship posi­tion in the ver­ti­cal trans­porta­tion mar­ket that we’ve built over the past 70 years and will now set the stage for the next gen­er­a­tion of ver­ti­cal flight. Our col­lab­o­ra­tion facil­i­tates expan­sion into new high-den­si­ty geo­graph­ic mar­kets with sus­tain­able, inno­v­a­tive and effi­cient ver­ti­cal lift and aer­i­al trans­port ser­vices.

“As the glob­al leader in ver­ti­cal lift, Bris­tow’s oper­a­tional exper­tise and effi­cien­cy, sup­port­ed by the trust and con­fi­dence of our cus­tomers, can safe­ly bring eVTOL air­craft into the mar­ket.”

Bris­tow expects to opti­mise its fleet man­age­ment strat­e­gy by match­ing eVTOL attrib­ut­es with the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly pro­duc­tive mis­sion pro­files. But­ter­fly­’s low-noise pro­file, pay­load capac­i­ty and abil­i­ty to fly in a broad range of weath­er con­di­tions will be well-suit­ed for high-den­si­ty, noise-sen­si­tive routes in geo­gra­phies with var­ied envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns.

Overair says But­ter­fly is designed to be the most robust, effi­cient, and qui­et air­craft in its class – pro­duc­ing zero emis­sions when in flight. It plans to be pilot­ed and capa­ble of car­ry­ing five pas­sen­gers with car­go more than 100 miles, at a top speed of 200 mph in all-weath­er con­di­tions

Butterfly’s unique capa­bil­i­ty stems from its break­through propul­sion sys­tem, known as Opti­mum Speed Propul­sion (OSP). Butterfly’s four large pro­pellers spin slow­ly in hov­er and even slow­er cruise, result­ing in two pri­ma­ry aero­dy­nam­ic advan­tages.