Interview with Archer Aviation’s Chief Safety Officer, Billy Nolen

Before being appoint­ed Archer Aviation’s Chief Safe­ty Offi­cer last month, Bil­ly Nolen was the FAA’s Act­ing Admin­is­tra­tor from April 2022 to June 2023. He has worked in the avi­a­tion indus­try for near on 35 years, pre­vi­ous­ly for com­pa­nies Amer­i­can Air­lines, Air­lines for Amer­i­ca, Qan­tas Group and West­Jet.

Nolen first began at Amer­i­can Air­lines in 1989 where he flew as a pilot and was type rat­ed for the Boe­ing 757, Boe­ing 767 and McDon­nell Dou­glas MD-80. He joined Air­lines for Amer­i­ca in 2015, as the Senior Vice-Pres­i­dent of Safe­ty, Secu­ri­ty and Oper­a­tions. He then allied with Qan­tas Group in 2018 as the Exec­u­tive Man­ag­er for Group Safe­ty and Health and two years lat­er became WestJet’s Vice-Pres­i­dent of Safe­ty, Secu­ri­ty and Qual­i­ty, based in Cal­gary, Cana­da.

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Why did you not car­ry on at the FAA?

When I look back on my FAA career, I had already spent many years in Gov­ern­ment type posi­tions. I nev­er saw myself as a long-term Gov­ern­ment employ­ee. I had been at the FAA for 14 months or so. I felt I had accom­plished my goals, in par­tic­u­lar, advanc­ing SMS and the eVTOL indus­try. I was asked to stay on by Sec­re­tary Pete, but was at a point in my life when I was ready to return to pri­vate indus­try. I like its tem­po.

When did you decide to work for Archer?

Once I made the deci­sion to step away from the FAA, I was approached by var­i­ous eVTOL com­pa­nies for my ser­vices. When I met Archer and Adam Gold­stein back in Jan­u­ary, I imme­di­ate­ly liked what I saw. I appre­ci­at­ed Adam’s vision. I met his incred­i­ble team mem­bers like Tom Muniz and Geoff Bow­er. I loved their ener­gy and pas­sion in bring­ing the Mid­night air­craft to mar­ket. The com­pa­ny real­ly res­onat­ed with me. It was my con­nec­tion with Adam that sealed the deal. You want to be sur­round­ed by like-mind­ed peo­ple.

Was there a light bulb moment when you realised, “The eVTOL indus­try is for me!”

Dur­ing March of 2022, I was in Dal­las at the HAI Heli-Expo. There were sev­er­al mock-up eVTOL sim­u­la­tors on dis­play and I thought, ‘This is pret­ty cool.’ I’ve always been a Star Wars and Trekkie fan. At that moment, I wasn’t think­ing, ‘This is what I want to do when I leave the FAA,’ but it is a trans­for­ma­tive indus­try. It can change how we live and move around; the air­craft are ultra qui­et and help decar­bonise the plan­et by offer­ing clean ener­gy. It made me think, ‘This is a great space to be in.’

What can you offer Archer when it comes to gain­ing full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, giv­en your FAA expe­ri­ence?

Archer has always had an incred­i­ble team. I am deeply hon­oured that I am now work­ing for them. The com­pa­ny already had a great safe­ty cul­ture and engi­neer­ing prowess. What I bring, after work­ing at a Nation­al and Inter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy lev­el, is a key under­stand­ing of how the FAA works and func­tions. How the cross-agen­cies oper­ate and my abil­i­ty to help nav­i­gate that.

For when Mid­night comes to mar­ket, it must be extreme­ly well estab­lished in the public’s mind that the air­craft is safe. Being cer­ti­fied by the FAA will go a long way in estab­lish­ing that sense of con­fi­dence.

You have now been with Archer for sev­er­al months. What have you con­tributed so far?

It start­ed from day one. Adam is a bril­liant man. He is not ret­i­cent about putting his lead­ers upfront to be the face of the com­pa­ny. So I’ve been doing the media rounds, trav­el­ling the world, talk­ing to a lot of peo­ple.

Mid­night Air­craft

Do you tru­ly believe that in 2025, Mid­night will gain its full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the pro­posed Man­hat­tan and Chica­go routes actu­al­ly occur?

This is com­plete­ly real­is­tic. I would not have joined Archer if I didn’t believe in the vision and cen­tral idea of how to get Mid­night to mar­ket. This is where I can con­tribute with my FAA expe­ri­ence. We have a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­way that is well under way. The Agency is writ­ing the rules on how pilots will oper­ate. This began dur­ing my tenure and will be pub­lished by the third or fourth quar­ter of next year. This com­ports to Archer’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion time­line for 2025.

Mean­while, a blue­print for air­space inte­gra­tion and a stan­dard for how ver­ti­ports are to be con­struct­ed and set up is com­plete. All of the chief pol­i­cy air reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work is in place, so you’ve got all the tools nec­es­sary to gain full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. That’s what gives me the con­fi­dence to say that the 2025 time­line is very achiev­able.

What is the most dif­fi­cult hur­dle you still need to cross?

So what might trip us up? We could find some crazy changes being made from a reg­u­la­to­ry stand­point, but that’s not what we are see­ing. The U.S Gov­ern­ment and the Admin­is­tra­tion itself is all in with this indus­try. For exam­ple, ear­li­er this month, over 70 mem­bers from the Fed­er­al AAM Inter­a­gency Work­ing Group vis­it­ed Archer at our Flight Test Cen­tre in Cal­i­for­nia to meet and talk, as well as wit­ness a live eVTOL flight.

The Innovate28 and Imple­men­ta­tion Plan has just been released. So, nothing’s changed with the time­line and time track. Recent­ly, I’ve been in Lon­don, fol­lowed by the Paris Air­show; and before that in oth­er major inter­na­tion­al mar­kets, dis­cussing our plans to ensure a har­mon­i­sa­tion of mar­kets. I believe the world is look­ing to the U.S for pri­ma­ry lead­er­ship in the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

FREE Report: “FAA Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Imple­men­ta­tion Plan”

Please talk about the Imple­men­ta­tion Plan.

Ok, first I don’t see more than a few Midnight’s in ser­vice dur­ing 2025 whether in New York, Chica­go or oth­er mar­kets. You’ve got to start scal­ing up the busi­ness. Next could be Los Ange­les, San Fran­cis­co, Mia­mi… so what will this take?

So, let’s turn it around. Look­ing back from 2028, what are the mile­stones we must have hit to reach this point? Of course, you require the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­way and the pilot rules. For, by then, you may have mil­lions of drones oper­at­ing in the air­space, along­side 50,000 reg­u­lar avi­a­tion com­mer­cial flights per day. To achieve this, the Imple­men­ta­tion Plan was cre­at­ed.

Get­ting the ver­ti­ports and the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, tying it alto­geth­er, with the key com­po­nent being the Gov­ern­ment. You can’t achieve this with­out a 100 per­cent all-in-approach from them. I am so proud of their inter­est and engage­ment.

Were you involved in com­pil­ing the Plan?

While it was a team effort, yes, it was my idea. Back in Octo­ber of last year, I was at the kitchen table, map­ping out all the many parts required to bring the indus­try to mar­ket, and I came up with a dia­gram and showed it to the FAA exec­u­tive team and asked what if we take all these dif­fer­ent and scat­tered pieces and present them togeth­er in an wholis­tic way to the Nation as an inte­grat­ed plan on how to get there.

Is the Plan real­ly going to hap­pen in just 5 years?

I total­ly believe this. Kennedy said back in 1962, “We choose to go to the moon by the end of the decade. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” Sev­en years lat­er Amer­i­ca did.

You have to plant that seed first, as once you gal­vanise a coun­try any­thing is pos­si­ble. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I said to the FAA, this Plan is our ver­sion of a Moon­shot. There is an “aero-space race”, so let’s go on and win it and make Amer­i­ca the glob­al leader. I call myself an opti­mistic real­ist. You need to give folks some­thing to tru­ly grab on to. A struc­ture, a process and a dis­ci­pline, to make it hap­pen.

Let’s move on now to safe­ty and the dif­fer­ing reg­u­la­tors. Recent­ly, Adam Gold­stein was crit­i­cal of EASA. Do you believe the 10 to minus nine goal is some­what extreme and unre­al­is­tic?

The reg­u­la­tors don’t have all the answers. It is a com­bi­na­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, co-ordi­na­tion, har­mon­i­sa­tion and trans­paren­cy to get there. Nat­u­ral­ly, I am a fan of the process the FAA has cho­sen, based around per­for­mance stan­dards com­pared to the over­ly pre­scrip­tive. This indus­try is new and nov­el, there­fore, it is up to the reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties to inno­vate on pol­i­cy. To allow this pol­i­cy to evolve and keep pace with tech­nol­o­gy, but with­out sac­ri­fic­ing safe­ty.

The indus­try wants the eVTOL mar­ket to become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. How is this pos­si­ble when each reg­u­la­tor has a vary­ing approach?

There is way more co-oper­a­tion going on than the pub­lic pro­nounce­ments would have you believe. It doesn’t mean we all agree 100 per­cent, but there is not this vast chasm, that some sug­gest. The ques­tion is: how do we bridge the small gap that exists? Every­one knows this must hap­pen and it will hap­pen. Right now, there are week­ly calls, month­ly and quar­ter­ly per­son­al meet­ings, exchanges of dia­logue, ongo­ing co-oper­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion which the pub­lic nev­er sees.

What about Chi­na and the CAAC, how can they har­monise with the FAA and EASA?

I have worked close­ly with Chi­na and the CAAC in my past work. From my expe­ri­ence, the coun­try has looked to the West, done some mod­el­ling, and they have a pret­ty good safe­ty record. This is where a bilat­er­al agree­ment comes in to play.

The U.S has a tenure bilat­er­al with the FAA; a long-stand­ing bilat­er­al with the UK, as well as with oth­ers like the CAAC. There is a process in place for over­seas coun­tries to val­i­date the U.S cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. So, we expect them to live by both the spir­it and the let­ter of these bilat­er­als. In the past, they have served us well on both sides. 

Ten years from now, where do you see the eVTOL indus­try?

By then, we will be decar­bon­is­ing the plan­et and decon­gest­ing our cities. We will see lit­er­al­ly 1,000s of eVTOLs on a glob­al basis as the indus­try con­tin­ues to scale up. And those com­pa­nies who have the right busi­ness plan will be doing very well. There is a space and a lev­el of hunger for this indus­try. I’ll give you an exam­ple.

Recent­ly, I went to New York to speak at a Con­fer­ence at the Wall Street Jour­nal. I land­ed at Newark in the ear­ly morn­ing. It then took me sev­er­al hours to reach my final des­ti­na­tion. On Mid­night, that same final part of the jour­ney might take just ten min­utes with no con­cerns about the rush hour. That is some­thing most folks would sign up for. The flight is safe, it is sus­tain­able, acces­si­ble, low noise, and it real­ly does help the envi­ron­ment. This indeed is our future.

You talk of scal­ing up with Archer and pro­duc­ing 650 Midnight’s by the mid­dle of next year. Is this real­is­tic?

Absolute­ly. The con­struc­tion of our high-vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty is well under way. We know there is strong demand for eVTOLs all over the world. From Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia, Indone­sia and UAE to Amer­i­ca and Europe. This is the next step after the jet age. 

A major prob­lem is the present lack of infra­struc­ture. Where are the required ver­ti­ports going to be built, espe­cial­ly in high­ly con­gest­ed city cen­tres?

There are ways.

We’re tak­ing a very prag­mat­ic approach to every aspect of our busi­ness and plan to focus on these city cen­tre to air­port routes ear­ly on as they already have exist­ing heli­pads at each des­ti­na­tion; FAA approved heli­copter routes; and very strong demand to tap into. From there, you need to think out of the box as there are many addi­tion­al exist­ing infra­struc­ture options that can be utilised.

Present park­ing lots might become ver­ti­ports along with exist­ing heli­ports and heli­pads which could be con­vert­ed. There are tops of build­ings that may be employed, so exist­ing infra­struc­ture can be used. Archer has its own ver­ti­port plans, so stay tuned. But you are absolute­ly right. The infra­struc­ture is a crit­i­cal enabler along­side elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. This needs to come togeth­er as one.

There is a U.S goal to cre­ate an ini­tial net­work of 500,000 elec­tric charg­ers on some 75,000 miles of the nation’s busiest high­ways and inter­states. Why can’t we tap in to this for the aero­space sys­tem as well, so it all comes togeth­er in an inte­grat­ed way?

This is why Archer is work­ing on announc­ing point-to-point routes now and doing so in part­ner­ship with the key local author­i­ties (May­ors, Port Author­i­ties, Util­i­ty com­pa­nies, etc.), so we can use the time we have between the present and 2025 to ensure local infra­struc­ture is prepped and ready to sup­port com­mer­cial eVTOL oper­a­tions. A major rea­son for cre­at­ing the recent Fed­er­al inter­a­gency work­ing group, is to ensure a nation­al strat­e­gy is devel­oped to inte­grate AAM into the nation­al air space and make sure we haven’t left any­thing on the table. I believe the prob­lem can, and will, be resolved and quick­ly. 

What inter­ests do you have out­side of work, how do you relax?

I love cycling. I try and cov­er 100 miles a week. I am a big jazz guy. I enjoy trav­el­ling with my wife and daugh­ters. I love stay­ing abreast of new ideas. I always ask myself what’s com­ing next?

So you are a futur­ist?

I am indeed and overt­ly so (laughs).

Do you not fly your­self?

Yes. I’ve been a pilot for 42 years and have flown over 4,000 hours on heli­copters. I was an air­line Cap­tain dur­ing my time at Amer­i­can Air­lines. I feel most com­fort­able in the air. I love every­thing about fly­ing and am total­ly at home there.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.archer.com

(Pho­tos: Archer Avi­a­tion)