Savback Helicopters to distribute Dufour Aerospace’s Aero3 eVTOL aircraft across Scandinavia

Dufour Aero­space has con­firmed Savback Heli­copters as a dis­trib­u­tor for its eight-seater tilt-wing eVTOL air­craft, Aero3, across Scan­di­navia.

Savback Heli­copters will pro­mote Aero3 in Den­mark, Fin­land, Ice­land, Nor­way and Swe­den. The com­pa­ny is a revered name in the ver­ti­cal flight indus­try, hav­ing trad­ed and mar­ket­ed heli­copters for more than 30 years, and will pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant knowl­edge of user cas­es and mar­ket prospects com­ing into the ver­ti­cal lift mar­ket.

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, CEO and Co-Founder of Dufour Aero­space, said: “Savback Heli­copters is a reli­able, expe­ri­enced part­ner, well-posi­tioned to pro­mote our Aero3 air­craft in Scan­di­navia. It makes us proud that such an expe­ri­enced com­pa­ny strong­ly anchored in the heli­copter mar­ket believes in the real poten­tial of our vision, designs and team.”

The Aero3 has a max­i­mum take-off weight of 2,800kg (6173 lbs), use­able weight of 750kg (1,653 lbs), a max­i­mum speed of 350 km/h (189 knots) and a range of 1,020 km (551 nm). It is being designed to meet EASA’s SC-VTOL stan­dards, mak­ing use of a hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem to meet the require­ments of oper­a­tors in mul­ti plat­forms.

The agree­ment with Dufour Aero­space demon­strates the con­fi­dence that Savback Heli­copters have in the future of eVTOL, and the advan­tages to be gained from being an ear­ly mover in the urban air mobil­i­ty sec­tor, worth an esti­mat­ed $1.5 tril­lion by 2040 accord­ing to Mor­gan Stan­ley.

Reja Savbäck, CEO of Savback Heli­copters, added: “We strong­ly believe that Dufour Aero­space’s eight-seater Aero3 pro­vides options for both today’s heli­copter mar­ket, as well as new use cas­es which its cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy opens up for us.

“We are proud of this part­ner­ship, as it shows that Dufour Aero­space trusts both our vast expe­ri­ence and our net­work in the avi­a­tion indus­try. Savback has iden­ti­fied the devel­op­ment of new mar­kets across the coun­tries of Scan­di­navia as being piv­otal to suc­cess.”

Dufour Aero­space relies on the tilt-wing prin­ci­ple. The tilt-wing air­craft Aero3, which is cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment, takes off and lands ver­ti­cal­ly in the small­est space like a heli­copter, but flies as fast and eco­nom­i­cal­ly as an aero­plane.

While the pro­pellers are elec­tri­cal­ly dri­ven, hybrid ele­ments (con­ven­tion­al tur­bine or fuel cells) ensure a suf­fi­cient­ly long-range (hybrid propul­sion). In addi­tion to the Aero3, Dufour Aero­space is also devel­op­ing the Aero2, an unmanned small air­craft that is also based on the tilt-wing prin­ci­ple.

While the manned Aero3 is emi­nent­ly suit­able for address­ing the needs of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, Dufour Aero­space has said it is ini­tial­ly focused on appli­ca­tions that do not require addi­tion­al new infra­struc­ture, such as Air Ambu­lance and Search and Res­cue mis­sions.