Spright achieves longest US commercial UAS BVLOS flight on record for medical drone network

Spright, the drone divi­sion of Air Meth­ods, has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the longest UAS Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) flight in the US by a com­mer­cial enti­ty, mark­ing a crit­i­cal achieve­ment in the pend­ing launch of the first bi-direc­tion­al US med­ical drone deliv­ery net­work.

The 29-mile flight was accom­plished using a Wing­copter 198 eVtol air­craft, depart­ing from Hutchin­son Med­ical Cen­tre in Hutchin­son, Kansas, and fly­ing to the affil­i­at­ed Rice Coun­ty Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal in Lyons, KS. The flight last­ed approx­i­mate­ly 23 min­utes, a stark con­trast to the esti­mat­ed 45 min­utes it takes to trav­el between the facil­i­ties by road.

Based on its patent­ed tilt-rotor tech­nol­o­gy, the Wing­copter 198 can car­ry pay­loads of 6kg (13 pounds) on one bat­tery charge over 75 km (47 miles). With less pay­load the dis­tance is increased to up to 110km (68 miles). The aircraft’s top speed is 150 km/h (93 mph).

Wing­copter reveals world’s first triple-drop deliv­ery drone, the Wing­copter 198

Spright pres­i­dent Joseph Resnik said: “We are proud to be lead­ing the UAS indus­try in open­ing cor­ri­dors of oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery. We look for­ward to the next phase of our effort to estab­lish a US med­ical drone net­work that con­nects com­mu­ni­ties with the resources need­ed to expand health­care access and improve patient care.”

For rur­al areas like Lyons, eco­nom­ic pres­sures often lim­it the patient ser­vices avail­able through com­mu­ni­ty health cen­tres. Sup­ply inven­to­ries, includ­ing items like whole blood or crit­i­cal med­ica­tions, may be cen­tralised in larg­er health­care facil­i­ties to con­trol costs.

There­fore, access­ing those prod­ucts in an emer­gency med­ical sit­u­a­tion is chal­leng­ing and time-con­sum­ing, delay­ing care and threat­en­ing pos­i­tive patient out­comes. Spright drone deliv­ery will enable the faster and more effi­cient on-demand trans­port of vital med­ical sup­plies, mak­ing a mea­sur­able impact on the qual­i­ty of care avail­able to out­ly­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Hutchin­son Region­al Health­care Sys­tem chief strat­e­gy offi­cer Chuck Welch added: “We are com­mit­ted to deliv­er­ing the best care pos­si­ble for our patients. Part­ner­ing with Spright on this ground­break­ing drone deliv­ery effort will allow us to bet­ter serve our patients and com­mu­ni­ties, but also cre­ate inter­nal effi­cien­cies through enhanced resource allo­ca­tion. It’s a win for our staff, our patients, and the broad­er region as a whole.”

Based in Gilbert, Ari­zona, Spright is a stand-alone Part 135 Oper­a­tor with a lead­er­ship team of more than 70 years of avi­a­tion oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence.

At the recent Farn­bor­ough Air Show in July, Spright and Avtrain signed Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) to part­ner for EASA pilot and oper­a­tor train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Spright and Avtrain sign for­mal agree­ment to bring pilot train­ing and oper­a­tor cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to Shan­non, Ire­land