Products · Heavy-Lift and Civil Logistics

How to Choose a Heavy-Lift Logistics Platform

Heavy-lift selection starts from the cargo, not the aircraft: mass, volume, how it must be secured, and whether it can be transferred without touching the ground.

1 of 10Method note

Overview

Define the delivered mass and the packaging mass separately; packaging on a high-vibration platform is not free.
Range must be quoted with the load on board, at the wind condition you expect, with the reserve policy you accept.
Cargo attachment is a design item. Off-the-shelf mounts rarely fit an arbitrary container.
Plan the receiving end: who unhooks the load, and what stops it swinging during the release.

H-100 is rated for 100 kg class payload. Published figures apply under typical conditions; actual values depend on payload, wind and dispatch pattern.

Payload mass is the least interesting number in logistics selection

Every logistics conversation starts with how much the aircraft can carry, and that is the right place to start but the wrong place to stop. A payload figure is a structural limit measured under specific conditions. What the programme needs to know is how much it can carry over the distance it actually flies, in the wind and at the altitude it actually operates at, with the reserve policy it intends to use, and how many of those trips it can complete in a working day.

Those are five different numbers and they pull against each other. Mass reduces range. Wind reduces range further and does so asymmetrically depending on direction. Altitude reduces lift and increases power demand. Reserve policy subtracts directly from usable range. Turnaround time sets how many trips fit in a day, which is usually the number the programme is actually contracted against.

So the selection question is not 'what is the payload' but 'what mass can be moved from A to B, how many times per day, at what cost per trip'. Convert the mission into those terms before comparing platforms, because platforms that look similar on payload can differ substantially on the rest.

Separate the two logistics missions

Point-to-point delivery and work-in-place are different missions that get conflated. Point-to-point moves cargo from a loading point to an unloading point, and the aircraft's job ends when the cargo is down. Work-in-place carries equipment that does something while airborne — spraying, cleaning, lifting a sensor into position, illuminating a site — and the payload is doing work rather than being transported.

The distinction drives the configuration. Point-to-point rewards range, payload mass and turnaround speed, and it wants a cargo interface that can be loaded and released quickly and safely. Work-in-place rewards stable flight, available payload power, and precise control of whatever the equipment does, and it often cares more about duration on station than about distance covered.

A platform optimised for one will compromise the other. Before comparing airframes, write down which of the two your mission is, and how much of the other is mixed in. Where both are present, consider whether they should be two configurations rather than one, because the shared-platform compromise is usually worse than it looks on a specification sheet.

The load itself is half the engineering

In logistics the cargo interface is not an accessory; it is part of the system. How cargo attaches, how it is secured, how it is released, how its mass is distributed and how its centre of gravity sits relative to the aircraft's — each of these affects flight characteristics, and each is a place where a programme can fail after the aircraft itself has been chosen correctly.

Two properties of the load matter more than its mass. The first is centre of gravity position relative to the aircraft's intended envelope, because an out-of-envelope load changes handling and can exceed the control authority available to correct it. The second is how the load behaves in flight — a rigid box behaves predictably, while a slung load swings and a liquid load shifts, and both introduce dynamics the flight controller was not tuned for.

Confirm that the platform publishes the four things that make this engineering rather than guesswork: allowable payload mass, centre-of-gravity envelope, mounting provisions and available payload power. If those are documented, integration is scoped work. If they are not, integration is a development project. Our cargo box and load securing and payload weight and balance assessment notes cover both sides of this.

Range, reserve and the honest planning figure

Range is quoted at a payload, a speed, an altitude and a wind condition, with a reserve policy attached. Change any of those and the figure moves. For logistics, the most consequential of these is usually reserve, because a delivery mission has a hard requirement to come back, and the reserve that makes that safe is not optional capacity — it is what separates a completed delivery from a recovery operation.

Plan against a loaded round trip rather than a one-way figure, apply your own wind envelope rather than the still-air figure, and state the reserve policy explicitly in the operating procedures. Then compute how many trips a day that implies once turnaround is included, because cost per delivered kilogram is a function of trips per day, not of range per trip.

Our range and loaded endurance assessment note walks through the calculation with the losses that matter. The short version: a range figure without its conditions attached is an upper bound, and treating an upper bound as a planning input is how logistics programmes end up with an aircraft that cannot complete the route it was bought for.

Configuring a logistics platform

The configuration we would propose starts from the route and the load, not from the airframe. Distance, mass, load dimensions, drop precision required, turnaround target and site conditions determine the platform class; the payload figure then selects within that class. Where the mission includes work-in-place, that requirement is scoped separately because it changes the payload power and control requirements.

For heavy loads at meaningful distance, the H-100 is the platform in our range designed for that class. Where a mission may involve a person on board, note that airworthiness certification and operational approval are the responsibility of the operator, and Montline does not provide airworthiness certification — the airworthiness statement on the H-100 page applies and should be read before planning any manned configuration.

Send your route, mass, load dimensions, drop precision requirement, turnaround target and site conditions to our engineering team. We will confirm whether a standard configuration covers it, and where it does not, we will scope what is required rather than let you discover the gap after delivery. The project requirement checklist is the fastest way to assemble what we need.