Urban Aeronautics announces first pre-orders of its CityHawk VTOL aircraft from Hatzolah Air

VTOL air­craft devel­op­er Urban Aero­nau­tics will pro­vide four of its City­Hawk to Hat­zo­lah Air for emer­gency med­ical ser­vice (EMS) appli­ca­tions. 

City­Hawk is cur­rent­ly planned to com­plete its devel­op­ment and FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for EMS use and be ready for pro­duc­tion  with­in the next three to five years. Hat­zo­lah Air will then become Urban Aero­nau­tics’ offi­cial sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive and dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nel to oth­er EMS and res­cue organ­i­sa­tions world­wide.

Both com­pa­nies pre­vi­ous­ly signed an Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) last year to devel­op, pro­duce, and mar­ket the City­Hawk air­craft for EMS appli­ca­tions.

Nim­rod Golan-Yanay, CEO of Urban Aero­nau­tics, said: “Hatzolah’s pre-order of four air ambu­lance City­Hawks is an amaz­ing show of con­fi­dence in our pro­gramme and in our com­pa­ny. We look for­ward to deliv­er­ing on our promise to rev­o­lu­tionise urban air mobil­i­ty and the emer­gency response capa­bil­i­ties of major cities across the world.”

City­Hawk is a light­weight twin-engine VTOL air­craft which can be opti­mised for urban trans­porta­tion or emer­gency response. It will utilise jet prop­u­la­tions, with cab­ins that are 20 to 30 per cent larg­er and qui­eter than con­ven­tion­al heli­copters.

Urban Aero­nau­tics is lever­ag­ing its ground­break­ing inter­nal rotor Fan­craft™ tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er the air mobil­i­ty dream to every­one and every­where. Designed to meet FAA require­ments, Fan­craft™ uti­lizes pow­er­ful duct­ed fans, deliv­er­ing supe­ri­or con­trol, sta­bil­i­ty, speed, safe­ty, and noise reduc­tion.

Fol­low­ing more than 300 test flights, the Israeli aero­space com­pa­ny has said the tech­nol­o­gy has clear­ly demon­strat­ed the poten­tial to fly in crowd­ed ter­rain includ­ing urban, wood­ed, and moun­tain­ous areas where it is dif­fi­cult for rotary heli­copters and oth­er air­craft to safe­ly oper­ate.

Urban Aero­nau­tics’ engi­neers are cur­rent­ly work­ing with Hatzolah’s experts to tai­lor the City­Hawk to their oper­a­tional require­ments. It will accom­mo­date a pilot, a patient plus com­pan­ion, two EMS per­son­nel, and a com­plete suite of onboard life sup­port equip­ment.  

Hat­zo­lah Air cur­rent­ly oper­ates fixed-wing air­craft for urgent and emer­gency mis­sions and has already said it is excit­ed to pio­neer the VTOL alter­na­tive to ground based ambu­lances in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed urban envi­ron­ments across the world.

The com­pa­ny was estab­lished in New York more than 50 years ago and has branch­es, divi­sions and affil­i­ates in dozens of cities around the world. Hat­zo­lah Air works with Hat­zo­lah branch­es and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions around the world to pro­vide flight sup­port resources, and is a leader in the trans­for­ma­tion of a con­ven­tion­al ambu­lance into a fly­ing one.

Eli Rowe, Pres­i­dent of Hat­zo­lah Air, said: “We are excit­ed to become not just the world­wide dis­trib­u­tor of Urban Aero­nau­tics’ Air Ambu­lance City­Hawk, but its first cus­tomer as well. Hatzolah’s mis­sion is always about patient care, and adding the VTOL City­Hawk has the poten­tial to save many thou­sands of lives every year.”