Vertical Aerospace and Bristow Group extend partnership to deliver full service ‘Ready-to-Fly’ eVTOL Operations

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and Bris­tow Group announced an expan­sion of their strate­gic part­ner­ship to bring Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) into com­mer­cial oper­a­tion with Ver­ti­cal’s VX4 eVTOL air­craft.

In announce­ment released yes­ter­day (Thurs­day), Bris­tow has also placed a pre-order for up to 50 air­craft, with the option to pur­chase up to 50 more.

Both com­pa­nies will devel­op a scal­able, cap­i­tal-light eVTOL oper­a­tions plat­form, designed to reduce bar­ri­ers to adopt­ing these air­craft by pro­vid­ing Vertical’s cur­rent and future cus­tomers with ful­ly inte­grat­ed solu­tions to launch ser­vices with­out build­ing oper­a­tional infra­struc­ture from scratch.

This “ready-to-fly” mod­el, which mir­rors exist­ing, suc­cess­ful oper­at­ing mod­els adopt­ed by region­al air­lines, includes access to cer­ti­fied air­craft, trained pilots, main­te­nance, and insur­ance – allow­ing VX4 cus­tomers to focus on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, sales, and net­work inte­gra­tion, while Ver­ti­cal and Bris­tow man­age air­craft oper­a­tions on their behalf. 

Stu­art Simp­son, CEO of Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “This strate­gic part­ner­ship is about exe­cu­tion and mir­rors what already suc­cess­ful­ly works in avi­a­tion today. It will low­er bar­ri­ers to mar­ket entry and accel­er­ate the adop­tion of eVTOL ser­vices world­wide. Togeth­er, we’re mak­ing it easy for cus­tomers to adopt elec­tric flight, allow­ing them to focus on what they are best at – cus­tomer ser­vice, loy­al­ty and sales.”

This expand­ed pre-order builds on the strate­gic part­ner­ship launched in 2021 and reflects Bristow’s con­fi­dence in the poten­tial of Vertical’s VX4 air­craft, includ­ing its com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path, and deliv­ery roadmap.

Chris Brad­shaw, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Bris­tow Group, added: “We are excit­ed about expand­ing our rela­tion­ship with Ver­ti­cal and help­ing move the future of advanced air mobil­i­ty for­ward.

“Bris­tow has over 75 years of pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal safe­ty, oper­a­tional, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and logis­tics exper­tise, and this agree­ment out­lines a frame­work to help scale these new air­craft glob­al­ly, offer­ing cus­tomers a seam­less path from con­cept to rev­enue.”

Bris­tow will lever­age its glob­al oper­a­tional foot­print, includ­ing mul­ti­ple Air Oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cates (AOCs) and Bristow’s glob­al MRO net­work approvals, to offer ful­ly man­aged oper­a­tions for Vertical’s cur­rent and future cus­tomers.

Tar­get cus­tomers include air­lines, logis­tics oper­a­tors and res­cue ser­vices – sec­tors where Bris­tow has over sev­en decades of mis­sion-crit­i­cal expe­ri­ence across the world.

As part of the strate­gic part­ner­ship, the com­pa­nies will har­mo­nize their respec­tive safe­ty man­age­ment sys­tems and uti­lize the VX4’s cloud-con­nect­ed archi­tec­ture to deliv­er pre­dic­tive main­te­nance, enhanced reli­a­bil­i­ty, and data-dri­ven fleet insights.

The com­pa­nies are also explor­ing Main­te­nance, Repair and Over­haul (MRO) ser­vices, includ­ing bat­tery swap­ping and field main­te­nance solu­tions

This agree­ment is a key enabler of Vertical’s Flight­path 2030 strat­e­gy — its roadmap to deliv­er­ing scal­able, cer­ti­fied, and com­mer­cial­ly viable eVTOL oper­a­tions glob­al­ly.

It also builds on Vertical’s recent com­ple­tion of the first-ever wing­borne flight of a winged eVTOL in Euro­pean open air­space — a crit­i­cal step toward cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial launch that reflects grow­ing reg­u­la­to­ry con­fi­dence in the capa­bil­i­ties of the VX4.