Poland: “Jetson to the Rescue!”

Rather like Thun­der­birds, per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­er, Jet­son, recent­ly car­ried out real-world moun­tain res­cue sim­u­la­tions along­side Poland’s emer­gency response team. This is believed to be Europe’s first moun­tain res­cue tri­al using a per­son­al eVTOL.

Jet­son, a for­mer Pol­ish-based start­up devel­op­ing sin­gle-seat eVTOLs, test­ed two pro­duc­tion-ready Jet­son ONE fly­ing vehi­cles in the Tatra moun­tain region of south­ern Poland. The tri­als were host­ed by GOPR (Górskie Ochot­nicze Pogo­towie Ratunkowe), the country’s vol­un­teer-led moun­tain res­cue organ­i­sa­tion.

Flight tests involved tak­ing the Jet­son ONE to remote and ele­vat­ed loca­tions, includ­ing Mt. Lubań at 1,211 metres. Despite windy con­di­tions, the craft reached the sum­mit in under four min­utes.

Jarosław Jur­cza­kiewicz, Head of the Pod­hale GOPR Group, com­ment­ed, “This is not just a tech show­case, but a real oppor­tu­ni­ty for a new tool in our work. Equip­ment like this could enable extreme­ly fast access to casu­al­ties, espe­cial­ly in sit­u­a­tions where reach­ing them by All-Ter­rain Vehi­cles or on foot takes a long time, depend­ing on the avail­abil­i­ty of pre­pared moun­tain trails.”

The tri­al also intro­duced the con­cept of a “res­cue spear­head”, a solo respon­der who can reach a casu­al­ty quick­ly and begin aid before back­up teams arrive.

Fatal­i­ties 2024/25

Stéphan D’haene, CEO of Jet­son, remarked that the GOPR team has iden­ti­fied a sce­nario where, if the Jet­son ONE were sta­tioned on a sum­mit, it could cov­er up to 700 km² of dif­fi­cult-to-reach ter­rain.

The tri­als come at a time when Europe is see­ing many annu­al moun­tain fatal­i­ties. Accord­ing to the Euro­pean Avalanche Warn­ing Ser­vices, 70 avalanche-relat­ed deaths were record­ed dur­ing the 2024–25 sea­son, show­ing the need for faster emer­gency access. 

In 2022, Jet­son moved pro­duc­tion and test­ing of the Jet­son ONE from Poland to a facil­i­ty in Arez­zo, Italy, where it then began pro­duc­tion. The com­pa­ny has since tak­en over 500 orders and is now expand­ing oper­a­tions with a new HQ and train­ing facil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://jetson.com

(Images: Jet­son)

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