Swiss Helicopter purchases Dufour Aerospace Aero2 and Aero3 aircraft

Dufour Aero­space and Swiss Heli­copter AG have signed a Let­ter of Intent for the pur­chase of two Aero2 and one Aero3 tilt-wing air­craft, mark­ing the last of all major Swiss civ­il heli­copter oper­a­tors to have signed let­ters of intent with Dufour Aero­space.

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, Co-founder and CEO of Dufour Aero­space said: “Swiss Heli­copter is famil­iar with all aspects of com­mer­cial heli­copter fly­ing and the asso­ci­at­ed infra­struc­ture.

“We are extreme­ly pleased that such an expe­ri­enced oper­a­tor has invest­ed in the devel­op­ment of Dufour Aero­space and intends to gain expe­ri­ence with our air­craft in the near future.”

Rolf Heuberg­er, CEO of Swiss Heli­copter added: “In view of the glob­al cli­mate chal­lenges, the avi­a­tion indus­try in par­tic­u­lar has a duty to reduce its emis­sions, and Swiss Heli­copter AG accepts this respon­si­bil­i­ty.

“We are pleased to have found an oppor­tu­ni­ty to oper­ate high­ly effi­cient air­craft using exist­ing and proven tech­nol­o­gy. We are look­ing for­ward to replac­ing a cer­tain part of our oper­a­tion with this mod­ern means of fly­ing and air trans­porta­tion.”

In ear­ly March, Dufour Aero­space put the hybrid unit into oper­a­tion on its test bench for the first time, con­sist­ing of a two-cylin­der engine from Suter Indus­tries, a gen­er­a­tor from Plet­ten­berg and its own dig­i­tal con­trol hard­ware. Fur­ther opti­mi­sa­tion and test­ing still remains before the dri­ve can be installed on the Aero2 X2.3 pro­to­type, built to trans­port a pay­load of up to 40 kg over a dis­tance of 400 km.

From the start, the com­pa­ny decid­ed against a bat­tery-only pow­ered dri­ve for the Aero2, due to the high mass and the low spe­cif­ic ener­gy of bat­ter­ies, until lighter bat­ter­ies or fuel cells are avail­able.

Dufour Aero­space’s hybrid propul­sion sys­tem recharges its bat­ter­ies with­in a few min­utes dur­ing flight to increase oper­a­tional safe­ty, which also means that the bat­ter­ies do not have to be recharged after land­ing and before tak­ing off again. No com­plex and expen­sive charg­ing or bat­tery swap­ping infra­struc­ture is required at the land­ing site, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for remote or impro­vised land­ing sites.

Bat­ter­ies are used more spar­ing­ly as only around 20% of the bat­tery capac­i­ty is used, and last longer than if they are more deeply dis­charged, result­ing in a reduced total envi­ron­men­tal foot­print.

In Jan­u­ary, Dufour Aero­space suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a Series B invest­ment from Vista Glob­al Hold­ing, a lead­ing glob­al pri­vate avi­a­tion group. Apart from Vista, two new investors par­tic­i­pat­ed in this fund­ing round.

Dufour Aero­space Attracts New Invest­ment From Vista to Accel­er­ate Expan­sion