Urban-Air Port’s Ricky Sandhu provides a detailed review of Air One’s public event (Part One)

A unique event took place in Coven­try City Cen­tre between April 25th and May 14th. The pub­lic were invit­ed to not only ven­ture close to the future of air flight, but even inter­act with and touch it. Entry was free.

The inspi­ra­tion behind this futur­is­tic enter­prise is Ricky Sand­hu, Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Urban-Air Port (UAP). He said, “We had an over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive response from both the eVTOL indus­try and the gen­er­al pub­lic. The event was extreme­ly encour­ag­ing and reward­ing.”

UAP’s ‘Air-One’ is a 1,700 sq m pre­fab­ri­cat­ed ver­ti­port designed for both rapid assem­bly and dis­as­sem­bly. This was the first time, any­where in the world, such a design had been con­struct­ed. Once com­plet­ed, it was then opened to the pub­lic.

Below is Part 1 of an in-depth inter­view with Sand­hu about the event.

Ricky Sand­hu

First, watch a 16’ video that shows you around the ‘Air One’ Urban-Air Port:

https://www.facebook.com/livecoventry/videos/1171718893650900/

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Chris Stonor asks the ques­tions.

When was the Coven­try event first con­ceived?

I had been work­ing in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) sec­tor since 2017 and formed a vision of the ‘Air One’ ground infra­struc­ture required for eVTOLs.

In 2020, I reached out to Coven­try Uni­ver­si­ty where they have two major depart­ments, The Nation­al Trans­port Design Cen­tre and the Insti­tute for Future Trans­port and Cities. I knew the guys there as we had worked on pre­vi­ous projects and asked them if they want­ed to join our bid for a finan­cial award com­pe­ti­tion from the UK Research and Innovation’s Future Flight Chal­lenge. They said yes and sug­gest­ed we should con­struct the ‘Air One’ in the cen­tre of Coven­try. That’s when I was intro­duced to the Coven­try City Coun­cil. At our very first meet­ing the Coun­cil said “absolute­ly yes”. They were very enthu­si­as­tic about the idea.

Then, after putting for­ward our bid, in Jan­u­ary 2021, we were select­ed as a win­ner and award­ed a UKP1.2 mil­lion grant. The goal was not only to cre­ate, devel­op and build the first ‘Air One’ Urban-Air Port, but turn the com­plet­ed infra­struc­ture into a major event where the pub­lic could come and view it. The Coven­try West­min­ster car park was cho­sen as the loca­tion.

How long did it take you to con­struct the Air One?

It took us 11 weeks.

What were some of the chal­lenges faced?

Build­ing any infra­struc­ture in a city is nev­er easy as there can be many com­pli­ca­tions. For exam­ple, nego­ti­at­ing and procur­ing the actu­al site and then access­ing it, while work­ing along­side local devel­op­ers and the Coun­cil, on such an ambi­tious pro­gramme nev­er before con­ceived.

Cre­at­ing a flat plane over a car park that is not flat at all, where we were not allowed to pen­e­trate the sur­face. Then we want­ed off-grid hydro­gen-pow­er, so had to work with local author­i­ties and ser­vices to achieve this. On top of all this, we suf­fered not one but two major storms (Eunice and Franklin). But we had a great team behind us includ­ing Sir Robert McAlpine. A huge amount of work went on behind the scenes.

With the expe­ri­ence gained, could you short­en the Air One con­struc­tion time in the future?

Oh yes, by 50 per­cent or more. We learned a lot of lessons and gained many insights from the first build. Five weeks or less is quite pos­si­ble.

The Hyundai Super­nal On Dis­play

How did you feel lead­ing up to the big day and the open­ing of ‘Air One?’

I had been trav­el­ling dai­ly to and from the site with mem­bers of the team, so knew how the con­struc­tion had gone. The team was gelling nice­ly, there were hun­dreds of peo­ple work­ing togeth­er to pull it off. We had over­come the storms and felt com­fort­able with the end prod­uct. On launch day we drove up from Lon­don. We stopped off at two dif­fer­ent motor­way ser­vice sta­tions. Obvi­ous­ly, we felt a bit ner­vous. It was a big day (laughs). What I remem­ber of the jour­ney is that I was queu­ing for a cof­fee at 6am and realised how poor our exist­ing motor­way infra­struc­ture can be. From the fur­ni­ture and brand selec­tion to the cater­ing… It dawned on me that our ‘Air One’ busi­ness mod­el could be repli­cat­ed in oth­er areas of trans­port ser­vices.

How did you sleep the night before?

I have an amaz­ing team, so they take on a fair amount of the stress-load. Lead­ing up to the day, I began each morn­ing with a triple shot flat white, so to be suit­ably fuelled. I did a few more addi­tion­al walks around my local Regent’s Park. So, when I reached ‘Air One’ on April 25th, I felt good. It was rather like arrang­ing a birth­day par­ty. You’ve sent out the invi­ta­tions, but have no idea whether your guests will indeed turn up!

Although, we did know how many of the pub­lic had booked in advance. We also knew the num­ber of VIPs com­ing. Still, you are feel­ing a bit ner­vous. On that first day over 400 peo­ple attend­ed. The media were every­where. It was an incred­i­ble time.

Which media out­lets attend­ed?

A num­ber of nation­al news­pa­pers: The Guardian, The Inde­pen­dent, The Times and The Mail. Var­i­ous broad­cast­ers includ­ing: BBC News, ITV, SKY, LBC and inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ers Globo TV from Brazil, TF1 and Agence France-Presse (AFP). From a busi­ness per­spec­tive a jour­nal­ist from the FT received a pri­vate tour and Bloomberg were also in atten­dance. We received inter­est from local media includ­ing BBC Coven­try & War­wick­shire Radio and the Coven­try Observ­er. Ful­ly Charged, the online broad­cast­er, focus­ing on elec­tric vehi­cles and renew­able ener­gy also attend­ed to film a spe­cial on EVs and charg­ing at ‘Air One’ and our zero-emis­sion focus.

How many peo­ple vis­it­ed the event over the three weeks?

15,000 peo­ple came along. This was above expec­ta­tion. Because of this response, we had to unlock more tick­ets, as the ini­tial ones were sold out. We kept our var­i­ous VIP pri­vate events and blocked off cer­tain time slots of ‘Air One’, but due to the response we had to add fur­ther tours.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as part of the pro­to­col, we couldn’t stay open dur­ing the evening, so were extreme­ly busy through­out each day from the 9am open­ing to clos­ing time around 6pm.

For every tour there was a line of peo­ple wait­ing. On the final day (Sat­ur­day, May 14th), a long queue formed out­side before the open­ing. It went all the way around the block. The pub­lic were pour­ing in all day of all ages from young chil­dren to the elder­ly. 1,200 attend­ed just on that last Sat­ur­day.

Did they come from over­seas?

Dur­ing those three weeks, peo­ple were fly­ing in from all over the world to vis­it. For our VIP events they came from North and South Amer­i­ca, Mex­i­co, Brazil, Europe, Asia, Ghana, Sau­di Ara­bia, the Mid­dle East. There were mem­bers of the world’s mil­i­tary and air­port man­age­ment. It was pret­ty mas­sive. There could have been more if the event had not clashed with the holy month of Ramadan and trav­el­ling from Chi­na and Hong Kong remains dif­fi­cult. So, yes, there was a major glob­al atten­dance.   

Who were some of these VIPs?

All the lead­ing eVTOL com­pa­nies were rep­re­sent­ed from Air­bus, Volo­copter and Wisk to Lil­i­um, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, Super­nal, Eve, Archer etc.. We had a huge and pos­i­tive indus­try response from Evtol OEMs to oper­a­tors includ­ing Heathrow, Luton, Munich Air­port Inter­na­tion­al and Frank­furt to name just a few.

What aspects of the event did the pub­lic enjoy the most?

Pri­mar­i­ly two things. Watch­ing the Mal­loy Aero­nau­tics T150 drone car­ry­ing a 70kg pay­load take-off from the infra­struc­ture, blew people’s minds. This was the first time a drone of its size had flown in such a dense and built-up UK urban envi­ron­ment. There were over 100 suc­cess­ful flights. The pub­lic were also blown away by our work­ing FATO (final approach and take-off) ele­vat­ing plat­form tech­nol­o­gy.

The Mal­loy Aero­nau­tics T150 Drone in Flight

Watch­ing some people’s faces on enter­ing ‘Air One’, some begin­ning rather scep­ti­cal and scrunched up, then only to see their expres­sion change to one of a curios­i­ty, joy and excite­ment demeanour as they left, hav­ing thor­ough­ly enjoyed them­selves and after under­stand­ing the ben­e­fits of the ‘Air One’ con­cept. That was real­ly spe­cial to see.

Can you offer an exam­ple?

A col­league spoke to an elder­ly man who had arrived with his son, rather grumpy and dubi­ous about the event, only to com­plete­ly change his tune after an hour. When my col­league point­ed me out in the cafe, the man bound­ed up and said, “This is absolute­ly fan­tas­tic. I am amazed. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Oth­ers I spoke to were very proud it was being held in Coven­try and didn’t want ‘Air One’ to leave. Some even became tear­ful. Words and phras­es like “blown away”, “bowled over”, “fan­tas­tic” and “amaz­ing” were com­mon-place. So, yes, it was an incred­i­ble three weeks. Peo­ple were absolute­ly chuffed that they could not only get tan­ta­lis­ing­ly close to the future, but even touch it.

(Pics: Urban-Air Port)

(The sec­ond part of this inter­view will be pub­lished next week)