Delivering on freight #Rev22
Cargo is the nearest-term modality to go commercial in advanced or electric air mobility.
Revolution.Aero’s Delivering on freight panel brought together the CEOs from three of the leaders in the cargo drone sector.
Moderator, David Fowkes, managing director, Raymond James noted that key to launching AAM is flying the things that people are not going to argue about. “Then as you certify and develop, as the UAM developers are, you [are already operating and] get paid and fly the hours.”
“Amazon will tell you the package doesn’t get to decide which aircraft it gets into, people do however,” he added.
Dronamics CEO, Svilen Rangelov told delegates the company plans to begin operations on the Mediterranean first before expanding to continental Europe and other markets.
“EASA took a different approach to the FAA. A risk-based approach. When we began our thesis eight years ago there were no regulations, so we assumed that we should try to fit in as best as possible with what exists today. Essentially be as close as possible to an existing airline.”
“Laws of physics are the same everywhere, it is the laws of men that change,” added Rangelov.
Parallel Flight Technologies’ platform is both augmenting and replacing existing technologies, according to Joshua Resnick, CEO and CTO. He gives the example of firefighting. Helicopters performing water drops on fire will have to cease operations whilst they deliver essentials to those on the frontline. Parallel’s Firefly can perform those deliveries instead.
“But on industrial operations where helicopters are used most often it makes sense to use our platform which is 50-75% cheaper. It turns into a replacement for the operations that don’t involve transporting people,” said Resnick.
Elroy Air CEO and founder, David Merrill said the company is being pragmatic in not trying to reinvent wheels where there is already supply chain. “We’re working with existing providers for a lot of the subsystems, we’re going to integrate, deliver and test the vehicle ourselves so today we are out of SF in about a 30,000sqft facility we can go into early development there, but once we are to the level of dozens f aircraft per year we will need probably four times the space.”
