Volatus Aerospace and Dufour Aerospace Deepen Partnership to Develop Runway-Independent Cargo Capabilities

Vola­tus Aero­space has shared more progress of its part­ner­ship with Dufour Aero­space, as the com­pa­nies work towards the deploy­ment of run­way-inde­pen­dent car­go capa­bil­i­ties aligned with Arc­tic, defence and com­mer­cial oper­at­ing require­ments.

Since announc­ing the part­ner­ship in Feb­ru­ary 2025, Vola­tus and Dufour have advanced their col­lab­o­ra­tion from ini­tial align­ment toward capa­bil­i­ty devel­op­ment, with a focus on oper­a­tional readi­ness.

The part­ner­ship is cen­tered on adapt­ing Dufour’s hybrid eVTOL air­craft into a run­way-inde­pen­dent, medi­um pay­load car­go capa­bil­i­ty suit­able for aus­tere, remote, and infra­struc­ture-lim­it­ed envi­ron­ments.

As part of this progress, a ded­i­cat­ed sim­u­la­tor has been installed at Vola­tus’ facil­i­ty in Toron­to, Cana­da. The sim­u­la­tor is being used to train Vola­tus pilots and to sup­port the devel­op­ment of a cus­tomer-fac­ing train­ing and eval­u­a­tion plat­form.

This capa­bil­i­ty is intend­ed to enable oper­a­tional con­cept devel­op­ment, mis­sion rehearsal, and train­ing in sup­port of both gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial use cas­es, and to inte­grate the air­craft into Vola­tus’ broad­er oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties offer­ing.

Glen Lynch, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Vola­tus Aero­space, said: “The focus of our work with Dufour Aero­space is on build­ing oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ty, not pro­mot­ing indi­vid­ual per­for­mance met­rics.

“Gov­ern­ments and com­mer­cial oper­a­tors alike are increas­ing­ly look­ing for reli­able, run­way-inde­pen­dent car­go solu­tions that can oper­ate in remote and chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ments. This part­ner­ship allows us to apply our oper­a­tional, reg­u­la­to­ry, and train­ing exper­tise to help shape such a capa­bil­i­ty.”

The col­lab­o­ra­tion con­tin­ues to pri­or­i­tize three inter­re­lat­ed capa­bil­i­ty areas:

• Arc­tic and Remote Oper­a­tions – Apply­ing Vola­tus’ expe­ri­ence in cold-weath­er and north­ern oper­at­ing envi­ron­ments to sup­port plat­form adap­ta­tion, mis­sion design, and oper­a­tional con­cepts suit­able for Arc­tic and oth­er aus­tere regions
• Mil­i­tary and Gov­ern­ment Logis­tics Sup­port – Eval­u­at­ing the platform’s applic­a­bil­i­ty for defence and pub­lic-sec­tor resup­ply mis­sions where run­way access is lim­it­ed or unavail­able, with an empha­sis on logis­tics resilience and oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty
• Com­mer­cial Appli­ca­tions –Assess­ing com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties in sec­tors such as crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture sup­port, remote indus­tri­al oper­a­tions, and emer­gency response, where run­way-inde­pen­dent logis­tics can com­ple­ment exist­ing avi­a­tion solu­tions

Vola­tus empha­sized that the part­ner­ship remains focused on eval­u­a­tion, train­ing, and capa­bil­i­ty devel­op­ment. Any future deci­sions regard­ing oper­a­tional deploy­ment, or man­u­fac­tur­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion will be sub­ject to fur­ther assess­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry con­sid­er­a­tions, and applic­a­ble approvals.

Dufour Aero­space is pio­neer­ing drones for crit­i­cal mis­sions. Based in Switzer­land, Dufour devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures effi­cient and sus­tain­able air­craft for car­go trans­porta­tion, logis­tics, and pub­lic safe­ty.

The Aero2 drone fea­tures dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion and a hybrid mod­ule to meet today’s Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty and medi­um-sized drone mar­ket require­ments.

Sascha Hard­eg­ger, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Dufour Aero­space, added: “Work­ing with Vola­tus pro­vides valu­able oper­a­tional insight as we con­tin­ue to mature our hybrid eVTOL plat­form. The part­ner­ship sup­ports the devel­op­ment of prac­ti­cal, deploy­able logis­tics solu­tions that address both gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial require­ments.”