Skyports Drone Services partners with Pyka to launch heavy cargo operations

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices has part­nered with elec­tric autonomous air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er Pyka for heavy pay­load drone logis­tics to lever­age its oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence and Pyka’s heavy pay­load air­craft.

The part­ner­ship will add the new­ly unveiled Pyka Pel­i­can Car­go uncrewed aer­i­al sys­tem (UAS) fea­tur­ing 175 kg pay­load capac­i­ty and 1.85 cubic metres car­go vol­ume, and com­ple­ments the exist­ing line­up of UAS solu­tions cur­rent­ly utilised.

Pyka’s Pel­i­can Car­go will be deployed for a range of oper­a­tions, includ­ing ser­vices for human­i­tar­i­an aid, logis­tics and deliv­ery com­pa­nies, as well as health­care and med­ical organ­i­sa­tions.

A full flight pro­gramme with Pel­i­can Car­go will begin ear­ly in the sec­ond quar­ter in Corn­wall, UK, and will include flights for the Future Flight Chal­lenge phase three Open Skies Corn­wall project, one of four UK Research & Inno­va­tion fund­ed projects won by Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices in July 2022.

Alex Brown, direc­tor of Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, said: “Hav­ing a ful­ly elec­tric, autonomous, heavylift car­go drone in our fleet is a real game chang­er as we have pre­vi­ous­ly focussed on oper­a­tions with small­er, high val­ue pay­loads.

“The intro­duc­tion of the Pel­i­can Car­go means that we can now fly sig­nif­i­cant vol­umes of car­go long dis­tances, con­nect­ing com­mu­ni­ties in remote areas and pro­vid­ing a reg­u­lar, robust form of trans­port in and out of hard-to-reach areas as a ready-to-go ser­vice.”

Pyka CEO and co-founder Michael Nor­cia added: “Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices is one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed drone oper­a­tors in the mar­ket and an ide­al part­ner for the deploy­ment of Pyka’s Pel­i­can Car­go and weare thrilled to be work­ing with Sky­ports to demon­strate the Pel­i­can Cargo’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary capa­bil­i­ties and oper­at­ing eco­nom­ics.”

In May 2020, in a pod­cast series about the avi­a­tion and urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket, we spoke to Michael Nor­cia about elec­tric air­planes that can take off and land from almost any­where.

Michael Nor­cia, CEO and Co-Founder of Pyka, talks on the Glob­al Air Taxi News pod­cast

Last Decem­ber, Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture and Cor­po­ración Améri­ca Air­ports S.A (CAAP) signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing to devel­op and deploy ver­ti­port infra­struc­ture for eVTOL oper­a­tions in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Sky­ports, Cor­po­ración Améri­ca Air­ports Sign Agree­ment to Devel­op Ver­ti­ports in Latin Amer­i­ca