Urban Aeronautics’ CityHawk to be developed for EMS missions after agreement with Hatzolah Air

Urban Aero­nau­tics has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) with Hat­zo­lah Air to devel­op, pro­duce and mar­ket its six-seater City­Hawk VTOL air­craft for emer­gency med­ical ser­vice (EMS) appli­ca­tions.

Based on ini­tial esti­mates, both com­pa­nies fore­see a poten­tial mar­ket of at least 800 City­Hawks for Hat­zo­lah Air and oth­er EMS oper­a­tors. The agree­ment is also being sup­port­ed by Besad­no Group, an Israeli-Amer­i­can invest­ment firm which is one of the largest investors in Urban Aero­nau­tics.

Rafi Yoeli, CEO of Urban Aero­nau­tics, said: “We are excit­ed to part­ner with Hat­zo­lah Air on the devel­op­ment of our City­Hawk EMS vehi­cle. Its com­pact size will enable it to land in the mid­dle of a busy city street, mak­ing it a per­fect fit for med­ical evac­u­a­tion mis­sions by dra­mat­i­cal­ly decreas­ing the time it takes to arrive on-scene, treat and trans­port sick or injured patients to appro­pri­ate med­ical facil­i­ties.”

Engi­neers will now work close­ly with Hatzolah’s experts to tai­lor the City­Hawk to their oper­a­tional require­ments. It will accom­mo­date a pilot, a patient plus com­pan­ion, two emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians and a com­plete pack­age of life sup­port equip­ment.  

Hat­zo­lah Air will also take up a lead­er­ship role in the mar­ket­ing of City­Hawk to oth­er EMS and res­cue organ­i­sa­tions world­wide, under a dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ment with Urban Aero­nau­tics. 

Hat­zo­lah Air cur­rent­ly oper­ates fixed-wing air­craft for Hatzolah’s urgent and emer­gent mis­sions. Found­ed more than 50 years ago and with divi­sion in dozens of cities across the world, Hat­zo­lah is the largest vol­un­teer organ­i­sa­tion of its kind.

And Eli Rowe, Pres­i­dent of Hat­zo­lah Air, added that the City­Hawk has ‘the pos­si­bil­i­ty to save thou­sands of lives every year’.

Urban Aero­nau­tics says the City­Hawk is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary VTOL with a unique com­pact foot­print and no exter­nal wings or rotors, result­ing in an air­craft with unpar­al­leled ‘fly any­where, land any­where’ access under almost any weath­er con­di­tions. 

It fea­tures the com­pa­ny’s ground­break­ing inter­nal rotor Fan­craft™ tech­nol­o­gy, which utilis­es pow­er­ful duct­ed fans in com­bi­na­tion with inno­v­a­tive aero­dy­nam­ic tech­nolo­gies that result in supe­ri­or con­trol, sta­bil­i­ty, speed, safe­ty, noise reduc­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The City­Hawk is planned to com­plete its devel­op­ment and FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for emer­gency use and be ready for pro­duc­tion ‘with­in three to five years’.

Ear­li­er this year, Urban Aero­nau­tics signed an agree­ment with HyPoint to incor­po­rate hydro­gen fuel cell pow­er in its City­Hawk, and it is also work­ing with Sin­ga­pore-based heli­copter char­ter book­ing ser­vice Ascent, to accel­er­ate bring­ing City­Hawk to mar­ket.