Blade Air Mobility has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Trinity Air Medical, a US multi-modal organ logistics and transportation company based in Tempe, Arizona.

Blade will purchase 100% of Trinity's capital stock for an upfront fee of approximately $23 million and the potential for additional consideration based on achievements by Trinity of targets over a three year period; and Seth Bacon and Scott Wunsch will become CEO and COO, respectively, of Blade MediMobility and both have agreed to five year non-competition agreements. All Trinity employees will be incentivised and are expected to remain at the company post-transaction.

“Trinity's long-term relationships with organ procurement organisations and transplant centres are a testament to its high-touchpoint approach to organ air transportation, providing seamless solutions for its clients, a perfect fit with Blade's culture of 24/7 availability and mission redundancy,” says Rob Wiesenthal, Blade's chief executive officer. “Trinity's end-to-end services integrate air missions with ground transport. Given the existence of landing pads at most hospitals today, we have the ability to immediately replace Trinity's ambulances with helicopters on certain hospital-to-hospital missions, while preparing for a transition to both existing 'last-mile' cargo drones as well as electric vertical aircraft, as soon as they become available.”

“Recent advances in organ preservation technology have resulted in consistently increasing demand for point-to-point organ air transport over longer distances,” comments Seth Bacon, CEO of Trinity. “Blade's scale in air transport missions coupled with its aerospace manufacturer relationships position us to continue expanding share in today's growing market, while laying the groundwork to deploy forthcoming drone and electric vertical aircraft technology, which will reduce transit times and improve patient outcomes.”

“Like Blade, Trinity is asset-light and neither owns nor operates aircraft, thus rapid expansion is not capital intensive. We expect the combination of Trinity's substantial flight volume with Blade's fast-growing MediMobility business to create the largest dedicated organ air transport company in the United States and enable us to secure more dedicated aircraft, resulting in better availability and pricing for the hospitals we collectively serve,” concludes Will Heyburn, Blade's chief financial officer.