Skyports partners with Australian drone manufacturer Carbonix on BVLOS operations

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices has part­nered with Aus­tralian drone man­u­fac­tur­er Car­bonix to scale beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) oper­a­tions across the coun­try using its long-range VTOL air­craft.

In the first phase of the part­ner­ship, Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices will embed spe­cial­ist inter­na­tion­al drone pilots with­in Car­bonix to pro­vide Car­bonix with flight expe­ri­ence, oper­at­ing reg­u­lar data acqui­si­tion mis­sions for Carbonix’s port­fo­lio of ener­gy infra­struc­ture and min­ing part­ners.

The pilots will help enhance the capa­bil­i­ties of the Car­bonix drone sys­tems and improve oper­at­ing pro­ce­dures, the objec­tive being to build Carbonix’s oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties.

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices pro­vides logis­tics, sur­vey and mon­i­tor­ing oper­a­tions to cus­tomers includ­ing health­care providers, car­go and deliv­ery com­pa­nies, ship­ping com­pa­nies and ener­gy pro­duc­ers.

The part­ner­ship with Car­bonix marks Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices’ first com­mer­cial project in Aus­tralia, with Car­bonix poised to deliv­er uncrewed aer­i­al data acqui­si­tion capa­bil­i­ty at scale to Aus­tralian busi­ness­es look­ing to mod­ernise infra­struc­ture inspec­tions.

Car­bonix CEO Philip van der Burg said: “Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices fills a gap with its scal­able end-to-end oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence in fly­ing fixed-wing VTOL UAVs. We look for­ward to hav­ing their pilots enhance our BVLOS capa­bil­i­ties and forg­ing a last­ing part­ner­ship that sees both com­pa­nies exchange knowl­edge and exper­tise.”

For Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, the part­ner­ship will assist with its ramp­ing up of BVLOS oper­a­tions in the region and enable them to serve the ‘strong demand’ in the local UAV mar­ket.

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices direc­tor Alex Brown added: “Our part­ner­ship with Car­bonix will boost oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties and enable the com­pa­ny to scale its infra­struc­ture inspec­tion ser­vices. Prov­ing the safe­ty case for drone oper­a­tions is cru­cial to the long-term growth and suc­cess of the indus­try.”

The first Remote Pilot to have land­ed on Aus­tralian shores was Matt Stur­dy, a spe­cial­ist in BVLOS aer­i­al sur­vey and inspec­tion who has led a range of deploy­ments across the UK and Europe.

He flew com­plex UAVs in harsh envi­ron­ments for var­i­ous uses, includ­ing pathol­o­gy and chemother­a­py deliv­ery for the UK Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) and Detect and Avoid test­ing as part of the SESAR joint Euro­pean project, which aims to mod­ernise the continent’s air traf­fic con­trol infra­struc­ture.

Stur­dy con­clud­ed: “In my first few months here in Aus­tralia I focussed on the devel­op­ment of best-in-class safe­ty pro­ce­dures, cus­tomer demon­stra­tions and train­ing with the Volan­ti air­craft. Aus­tralia is on the brink of unlock­ing huge poten­tial with drone oper­a­tions and I’m grate­ful to be able to sup­port this with the Car­bonix team.”

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices has sup­port­ed Car­bonix on more than 85 long-range mis­sions, cov­er­ing over 1,500km across Aus­tralia, with the likes of Hitachi Vin­tara (ACT), Charles Dar­win Uni­ver­si­ty (NT), and Endeav­our Ener­gy (NSW), along with Trans­Grid (NSW), EVO Ener­gy (ACT), South Aus­tralian Pow­er Net­works (SA) and Aus­grid (NSW) to inspect pow­er infra­struc­ture for veg­e­ta­tion encroach­ment and asset man­age­ment.