Watch Video: “AutoFlight Achieves World’s First 2‑Ton eVTOL Offshore Oil Platform Operation With 300 Kilometre Round-Trip”

Chi­na-based, eVTOL devel­op­er, Aut­oFlight, has announced a suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the world’s first off­shore oil plat­form car­go trans­port mis­sion using its eVTOL air­craft, Car­ryAll, reports a press release. The mis­sion was in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Chi­na Nation­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion (CNOOC) and CITIC Off­shore Heli­copters.

The V2000CG Car­ryAll, the world’s first 2‑ton eVTOL to receive com­pre­hen­sive cer­ti­fi­ca­tion includ­ing Type Cer­tifi­cate, Pro­duc­tion Cer­tifi­cate, and Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­tifi­cate, “exe­cut­ed a pre­ci­sion car­go deliv­ery mis­sion,” says the release. 

The air­craft depart­ed from a des­ig­nat­ed launch facil­i­ty in Shen­zhen car­ry­ing essen­tial sup­plies includ­ing fresh pro­vi­sions and emer­gency phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, com­plet­ing a 58-minute trans-ocean­ic flight to the Huizhou 19–3 Oil plat­form, locat­ed 150 kilo­me­tres off­shore.

Please Watch Video

Tra­di­tion­al mar­itime car­go trans­port to CNOOC’s South Chi­na Sea plat­forms requires around 10 hours per tran­sit, cre­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant delays for crit­i­cal sup­ply deliv­er­ies and emer­gency response sce­nar­ios. While heli­copters do pro­vide rapid deploy­ment capa­bil­i­ties, oper­a­tional costs remain high for rou­tine car­go oper­a­tions.

Ren Yongyi, Deputy Man­ag­er, Cri­sis Man­age­ment & Oper­a­tions Sup­port Depart­ment, CNOOC Chi­na Lim­it­ed Shen­zhen Branch, com­ment­ed, “This flight rep­re­sents the con­ver­gence of inno­v­a­tive avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy, proven oper­a­tional exper­tise and real-world off­shore oper­a­tional require­ments.”

He con­tin­ued, “We have suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ed a com­pre­hen­sive ‘devel­op­ment + oper­a­tion + appli­ca­tion’ frame­work for low-alti­tude eco­nom­ic imple­men­ta­tion.”

Kellen Xie, Senior VP of Aut­oFlight, added, “These results val­i­date both the tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­i­ty and oper­a­tional reli­a­bil­i­ty of large-scale eVTOL plat­forms for off­shore ener­gy sec­tor appli­ca­tions. The air­craft’s per­for­mance under demand­ing mar­itime con­di­tions demon­strates the matu­ri­ty of elec­tric avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy for com­mer­cial deploy­ment in com­plex oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments.”

CITIC Off­shore is the largest heli­copter oper­a­tor in Asia. The com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed com­pre­hen­sive oper­a­tional sup­port, lever­ag­ing over four decades of gen­er­al avi­a­tion exper­tise to coor­di­nate air­space man­age­ment and safe­ty pro­to­cols. 

The release con­tin­ues, “The mis­sion used Chi­na’s first dig­i­tal air traf­fic con­trol tow­er, estab­lish­ing new stan­dards for eVTOL inte­gra­tion with­in exist­ing avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture. This col­lab­o­ra­tive approach ensured smooth exe­cu­tion while main­tain­ing the high­est safe­ty stan­dards through­out the oper­a­tion.”

Oper­at­ing with­in the chal­leng­ing South Chi­na Sea envi­ron­ment, char­ac­terised by fog, high salt mist and humid­i­ty lev­els, as well as vari­able strong wind con­di­tions, the Car­ryAll suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ed crit­i­cal flight capa­bil­i­ties includ­ing pre­ci­sion ver­ti­cal oper­a­tions, sta­ble hov­er­ing per­for­mance and extend­ed trans-ocean­ic nav­i­ga­tion.

This mis­sion estab­lish­es a foun­da­tion for expand­ed eVTOL appli­ca­tions across off­shore ener­gy oper­a­tions. These encom­pass effi­cient per­son­nel trans­porta­tion for crew rota­tion and emer­gency med­ical evac­u­a­tion; rapid deploy­ment of high-val­ue com­po­nents and emer­gency sup­plies; enhanced mon­i­tor­ing and main­te­nance capa­bil­i­ties through facil­i­ty inspec­tions; and accel­er­at­ed response times for mar­itime inci­dents and emer­gency sit­u­a­tions.

The Car­ryAll incor­po­rates advanced Lift & Cruise con­fig­u­ra­tion, deliv­er­ing a typ­i­cal jour­ney range of 200 kilo­me­tres per hour and a pay­load capac­i­ty of 400 kilo­grams.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.autoflight.com/en

(Images: Aut­oFlight) 

For the lat­est news, insights and con­tent regard­ing the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, please join the fol­low­ing eVTOL Insights chan­nels: What­sApp, Face­book, Insta­gram, Spo­ti­fy, Apple Pod­casts, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.