Products · Heavy-Lift and Civil Logistics

Logistics Platform Project Requirement Checklist

A logistics project can be scoped in one page if the page asks the right questions. This is the set we use.

10 of 10Method note

Overview

Cargo: mass, volume, centre of gravity, attachment points, whether it must stay upright.
Route: pickup and drop coordinates and elevations, obstacles, and the number of trips per day or week.
Delivery method: land, hover-drop or winch, and who is on the receiving side.
Environment: temperature, wind, precipitation, salt or dust, and the coldest and hottest day of the year.
Ground segment: who operates, where they stand, how they communicate, and how the batteries are moved.

Why a checklist comes first

Logistics programmes go wrong in a predictable way: the aircraft is specified before the route and the load are properly described, and the gap between the two is discovered after delivery. The gap is rarely dramatic — it is usually a route slightly longer than assumed, a load slightly heavier, a delivery point slightly more obstructed, or a turnaround slightly slower. Each is small and each is enough to make a programme miss its numbers.

A requirement checklist prevents this by forcing the description into numbers before anything is chosen. It is not bureaucracy; it is the cheapest place to discover a mismatch. Filling one in takes a few hours and it converts the conversation from 'what aircraft' to 'what does this route actually require'.

The checklist below is what we ask for before proposing a configuration. Where an answer is unknown, that is a useful answer too — it tells us where a survey or a trial is needed before a commitment can be made.

Route and site

Route distance and profile: one-way distance, elevation change, highest point, and whether the outbound and return legs differ. Whether any part of the route is over water, and if so how much, and whether any intermediate landing point exists. Where the route crosses terrain features that shape wind — saddles, ridges, coastlines.

Launch and recovery points: dimensions, surface type, obstructions, access, and whether either point changes with season, tide or site activity. Whether the delivery point can accept a landing, or requires hover release or a low-pass drop. What the wind behaviour is at each point, by time of day where known.

Operating context: the season or months of operation, the hours available, the airspace status of the route, and any local restrictions that apply. Whether the operation is routine or called on demand, because that changes the readiness requirement more than it changes the aircraft.

Load

Mass: the actual loaded mass, not an estimate, and the range it varies across. Dimensions and shape, and whether the load is rigid, slung, liquid or granular — because a load that moves has more than one centre of gravity. Where the load's centre of gravity sits, or can sit, relative to the mounting point.

Handling: how the load is attached and released, whether release must be hover or low-pass, what precision the drop requires, and what happens if the load cannot be delivered. Whether the load must stay dry, sterile, upright or intact, and what packaging that implies.

Consumables, where the load is a material being applied rather than transported: what the material is, its density and flow behaviour, what application rate is required and at what uniformity, and what the environmental limits on application are.

Programme

Volume: how much has to move per day, per week, or per season, and how that volume is distributed — steady, or concentrated in a window. Peak requirement matters more than average, because the configuration has to meet the peak.

Turnaround target: how quickly the aircraft must be ready again, and what currently sets that limit. Crew: how many people are available, what their current competence is, and what training is acceptable. Ground alternatives: what the current method is, what it costs and how long it takes — because that is the benchmark the aerial option has to beat.

Compliance: what operator licensing, approvals or local rules apply where you will operate, and what records are required. This varies by jurisdiction and by payload type, and it is the operator's responsibility — but it constrains the configuration and should be established early rather than late.

What we do with it

From a completed checklist we produce a configuration proposal: platform class, payload and mounting, container or application system, expected range and endurance with conditions stated, an estimate of trips per day, and a list of what the configuration will not do. That last item is the one we insist on including.

Where the checklist reveals unknowns — a route not surveyed, a wind distribution not measured, a load not weighed — we will say what needs to be established first and how. Our project requirement discovery work is the structured version of this conversation, and feasibility assessment is the stage that follows it.

Send what you have to our engineering team. Partial answers are fine and are often how these conversations start — a route and a load are enough for us to tell you whether the rest is worth pursuing. For the mass and range calculations that follow, see the weight and balance and range and loaded endurance assessments.