EXECUTIVE PROFILE: Duncan Walker, Chief Executive Officer at Skyports

The next instal­ment of our Exec­u­tive Pro­files is now live! This time, we put the ques­tions to Dun­can Walk­er, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Sky­ports.

We start­ed these inter­views as an infor­mal way to get to know the indus­try’s thought lead­ers, inno­va­tors and influ­encers. Every­thing from their favourite bit of advice, book and hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion, to their top three chal­lenges for the mar­ket and the biggest devel­op­ment to hap­pen this year.

If you’re work­ing in the indus­try and would like to be fea­tured in these inter­views, we’d love to hear from you! Please email editorial@evtolinsights.com and one of the team will get back in touch.

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Favourite hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion?

Sici­ly.  My wife is Ital­ian, and we spend as much time out there as we can.  Great weath­er, great coun­try­side, and fresh ricot­ta straight from our neighbour’s goat.

Favourite book or film?

Life is Beau­ti­ful.  An Ital­ian film about a father and son in a con­cen­tra­tion camp.  It’s a lot less depress­ing than it sounds.

Best bit of advice you’ve been giv­en?

There are two. The first is less a bit of advice and more a way of work­ing.  Mike Slade was CEO of a prop­er­ty com­pa­ny where I spent a long time.  He was the most charis­mat­ic leader I have met.  He achieved more by being friend­ly, charm­ing and gre­gar­i­ous than com­peti­tors who worked twice as hard.  He could also get away with mur­der. 

Dur­ing the great finan­cial cri­sis, the com­pa­ny had a £50m loan with Bar­clays Bank.  Bar­clays sent a junior banker to dis­cuss the loan and ask for repay­ment.  With­out blink­ing Mike got out the com­pa­ny cheque book, wrote a cheque for £50m hand­ed it over and said “Dar­ling (Mike called every­one dar­ling, includ­ing me), take this to your boss and tell him we are nev­er work­ing with Bar­clays again”.  Need­less to say, there was not £50m wait­ing in the bank account, but he did it with such con­fi­dence that the bank nev­er cashed the cheque assum­ing that the loan must be good.

The sec­ond is from Tony Ryan, via his son Dec, Sky­ports’ Chair­man.  That advice is sim­ple – just jump.  In most busi­ness deci­sions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a new indus­try like ours, there is more than one right answer and a lot more than one wrong answer.  Often the biggest risk is doing noth­ing rather than doing some­thing which may not be 100% right.  Just jump.

If you could invite three guests to din­ner, alive or dead, who would they be?

Nir­mal Pur­ja, the record hold­er for climb­ing the 14 peaks above 8,000 metres

James Dyson, for his abil­i­ty to keep inno­vat­ing until he gets what he wants

Paula Rad­cliffe, arguably one of the best marathon run­ners of all time

I am fas­ci­nat­ed by how far peo­ple can push them­selves, the risks they take in the pur­suit of their goals and what it takes to be extra­or­di­nary. 

More prac­ti­cal­ly, I always look for these traits on a CV when hir­ing.  Not every­one is a record-hold­ing Olympian, but if the “oth­er inter­est” sec­tion of the CV sug­gests some­one is a bit nuts and pre­pared to do some­thing at the week­end which requires ded­i­ca­tion and effort, it’s a much bet­ter indi­ca­tor of their like­ly suc­cess in the work­place than their aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Favourite car?

Easy.  I have a 2001 Land Rover Defend­er.  200,000km on the clock, zero mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, hor­ri­ble to dri­ve.  I love it.

Describe Sky­ports in five words

Ambi­tious, Expert, Dynam­ic, Bold, Proac­tive

What is Sky­ports’ vision for the eVTOL and UAM mar­ket?

We just want to help make it hap­pen quick­ly.  Fly­ing drones, build­ing infra­struc­ture, it’s all small steps in the big­ger pic­ture.  I don’t believe in a world where the sky is dark with drones, but rather one where con­gest­ed or under­served areas are more acces­si­ble in a way which is fast and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly.

Most peo­ple don’t need their sham­poo from Ama­zon to arrive in 30 min­utes (which can already hap­pen with ultra-quick deliv­ery ser­vices in most cities), but peo­ple do need med­i­cines to be deliv­ered to remote com­mu­ni­ties, crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture to be mon­i­tored, and con­ges­tion and pol­lu­tion to be tak­en off city streets.  In short, we want to help the indus­try tack­le prob­lems that are real and impact­ful.

Proud­est moment at Sky­ports so far?

Every week the Sky­ports team is work­ing on some­thing that is ‘first-of-its-kind’ or ‘nev­er before seen’. First ver­ti­port, our drone deliv­ery work – none of it has been done before.  It’s real­ly hard, but when we achieve these mile­stones it’s a fan­tas­tic achieve­ment for the team.  I also love see­ing how peo­ple can progress at Sky­ports.  One of our key team mem­bers in the drone ser­vices busi­ness who leads some real­ly high-pro­file projects for us had his 21^st birth­day a cou­ple of weeks ago.  He’s been with us for a num­ber of years, and I still can’t quite believe he’s 21 and doing the work he does.

What does a typ­i­cal day look like for you?

I trav­el a lot, so often it involves a plane or train some­where.  On a non-trav­el day, it goes some­thing like:

Take the dogs for a run ear­ly in the morn­ing to get back for break­fast with the kids before school.  Cycle to work.

Then I work with the man­age­ment teams in our offices around the world.  In the morn­ing I will spend time with the Sin­ga­pore team, then Europe and the Mid­dle East in the mid­dle part of the day and the US team in the after­noon. 

I don’t real­ly like meet­ings, but I have a lot of them in the diary.  I try to keep them real­ly short, and action-focused.  I often leave meet­ings after the first 15 min­utes which is a tool to make sure we are cov­er­ing the real­ly impor­tant things up front.

I try to talk to at least two of our vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ners each week.  They are our cus­tomers, and we need to know them real­ly well.

For our drone ser­vices busi­ness I always enjoy our oper­a­tional updates where we review the week’s fly­ing.  That’s an excit­ing part of the busi­ness.

Most evenings I am a taxi ser­vice to a kid’s sports club.

Most inter­est­ing sto­ry about the indus­try that you’ve read?

SPAC mania was a short lived but real­ly inter­est­ing time.  As pub­lic com­pa­nies, the OEMs are forced to share so much infor­ma­tion which is great for the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the indus­try, but I am con­cerned that the pub­lic mar­kets (par­tic­u­lar­ly bear­ish pub­lic mar­kets) are not well suit­ed to non-income pro­duc­ing new tech.  There will be some great suc­cess sto­ries but also some high-pro­file fail­ures over the next cou­ple of years.

Top three chal­lenges for the indus­try?

Fund­ing

Tim­ing of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for OEMs

Scal­ing to a point of com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty.

Where do you think the indus­try will be in the next five years?

We’ll see a num­ber of the lead­ing vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers cer­ti­fied and oper­a­tional in a cou­ple of mar­kets.  I hope that in this time frame, we will be on the cusp of seri­ous ramp up as vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers are ful­ly focused on mass pro­duc­tion, the mar­ket pric­ing is acces­si­ble to many and AAM is pro­vid­ing gen­uine ben­e­fits to people’s lives. 

We’ll also see a num­ber of the OEMs still strug­gling for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The first mover cities will be estab­lished and there will be a big pull from the fast fol­low­ers who recog­nise the ben­e­fits that AAM can bring to a city.

How can peo­ple get in con­tact with Sky­ports?

The best way is to email us at news@skyportsmedia.net or via our con­tact form on the Sky­ports web­site.

Biggest indus­try devel­op­ment you think will hap­pen this year?

An empha­sis on real life test­ing and inte­gra­tion. There has been a rush of activ­i­ty, from tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ments for the pas­sen­ger jour­ney, to charg­ing capa­bil­i­ties and air­space man­age­ment sys­tems, these inno­va­tions need to work togeth­er.

I’m also excit­ed about the big­ger pay­load drones that are com­ing through test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.  They could be a game chang­er in logis­tics net­works, and we are spend­ing a lot of time work­ing with these man­u­fac­tur­ers.