INTERVIEW: Alan Lim and Joshua Ng from Alton Aviation Consultancy preview this month’s Singapore Airshow

This tran­script is from the eVTOL Insights Pod­cast which fea­tured Joshua Ng and Alan Lim for Alton Avi­a­tion Con­sul­tan­cy. The pair pre­view the Sin­ga­pore Air­show, but also give their insights on the cur­rent mar­ket and in par­tic­u­lar, the Asia-Pacif­ic region.

Ques­tion: Can you briefly intro­duce your­selves?

Joshua: I’m cur­rent­ly a Direc­tor at Alton Avi­a­tion Con­sul­tan­cy where I lead the tech­nol­o­gy and mobil­i­ty prac­tice glob­al­ly for the firm. I start­ed my career at ST Aero­space, which is one of the largest inde­pen­dent MRO providers in the avi­a­tion sec­tor. My roles at the com­pa­ny extend­ed across dif­fer­ent parts of the val­ue chain, includ­ing cus­tomer account man­age­ment and sup­ply chain man­age­ment.

I moved into con­sult­ing about eight years ago and have been sim­i­lar­ly work­ing across the avi­a­tion space, with air­lines, with air­ports, with investors, and many oth­er dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers in the val­ue chain. I think like most of us in the firm, we have all been bit­ten by the avi­a­tion bug. We all have an ori­gin sto­ry that has some­thing to do with planes. And that’s why I start­ed my career in avi­a­tion and choose to con­tin­ue to be in the avi­a­tion sec­tor with Alton.

Alan: I’m a Direc­tor here at Alton’s Sin­ga­pore office and togeth­er with Joshua spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time in the tech­nol­o­gy and mobil­i­ty prac­tice, focus­ing on advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) and new tech­nolo­gies. I have an air­line back­ground – hav­ing start­ed my career with Sin­ga­pore Air­lines on the oper­a­tions side of the busi­ness, look­ing at things like poli­cies for air­port oper­a­tions, on-time per­for­mance. Sub­se­quent­ly, I moved into the com­mer­cial side of the house, look­ing at the e‑commerce dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels, and final­ly end­ing my time at Sin­ga­pore Air­lines in a busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion role.

Dur­ing Sin­ga­pore Air­lines’ three year long busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram, I expe­ri­enced a taste of con­sult­ing, and decid­ed to move into man­age­ment con­sult­ing, which is what I’ve been doing for about five years now. Like Joshua men­tioned, I have a good ori­gin sto­ry and here at Alton find myself doing what I like and help­ing our clients fig­ure out the biggest ques­tions in the indus­try.

[4:25] Ques­tion: What is Alton’s role in the emerg­ing AAM mar­ket?

Joshua: Alton works on con­sult­ing projects across the entire avi­a­tion sec­tor, and we char­ac­ter­ize the work we do in the AAM space as being at the inter­sec­tion of what we would call tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion and “new avi­a­tion”. For tra­di­tion­al lega­cy play­ers, we help them under­stand what’s to come and we help them to under­stand their go-to-mar­ket strate­gies and how they can par­tic­i­pate and part­ner in the sec­tor. For the new play­ers enter­ing the avi­a­tion sec­tor for the first time, we also help them on the same top­ics, but from an “out­side-in” per­spec­tive, and we help them try to nav­i­gate the intri­ca­cies, chal­lenges, and reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment that char­ac­ter­ize the avi­a­tion sec­tor.

Alan: Adding to Joshua’s point, we help play­ers under­stand top­ics such as “what is the mar­ket size, what is address­able, what are the growth prospects, is the tech­nol­o­gy viable, what are the ways to com­mer­cial­ize these prod­ucts”. In addi­tion to our exper­tise in the tra­di­tion­al avi­a­tion space, we also have a deep under­stand­ing of the ongo­ing devel­op­ments in the AAM space, so that we can offer indus­try insights and out­look, giv­en that this is a fast-chang­ing indus­try land­scape.

[8:40] Ques­tion: As Alton is mod­er­at­ing the Aero­Fo­rum at the Sin­ga­pore Air­show from Feb­ru­ary 20th to 25th, can you share a bit about what is expect­ed from the pan­els?

Joshua / Alan: We have been prepar­ing for the Air­show for prob­a­bly about six months, and what we have sought to bring dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers from across the val­ue chain, across dif­fer­ent geo­gra­phies, and not only focus on Asia but from an inter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive as well, to bring their wealth of exper­tise and insights to the show.

At the very first ses­sion (Feb­ru­ary 20th), we’ll bring in very promi­nent C‑suite exec­u­tives from the dif­fer­ent AAM OEMs to share their views on what the sector’s future tra­jec­to­ry is, and what are some of the chal­lenges as the indus­try march­es towards com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

We will also cov­er top­ics like try­ing to under­stand the nuances of using AAM vehi­cles for inter­na­tion­al trav­el, and try­ing to under­stand from the dif­fer­ent oper­a­tors what kind of oper­at­ing mod­els they are look­ing to adopt as they bring their air­craft into com­mer­cial­iza­tion and into ser­vice.

And final­ly, but not the least, we will also try and under­stand from them with so much promise and so much oppor­tu­ni­ty, real­ly, what are the dif­fer­ent pieces that have to come into place to enable the entire ecosys­tem.

Ses­sion 1:
Feb­ru­ary 20th 3.30pm – 4.30pm
“AAM INDUSTRY EXECUTIVES FORUM”
(Atten­dees include CCO from Archer, CFO from Elec­tra, CEO from EVE, CDO from Sky­Drive, and CCO from Ver­ti­cal)

Ses­sion 2:
Feb­ru­ary 21st 10.30am – 11.30am
“AAM BEYOND BORDERS – HOW DO WE ENABLE INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL”

Ses­sion 3:
Feb­ru­ary 21st 1.30pm – 2.30pm
“AAM OPERATING MODELS – COMPLETE, COMPETE, OR COMPLETELY DIFFERENT”

Ses­sion 4:
Feb­ru­ary 23rd 11.00am – 12.00pm
“DEVELOPING THE AAM ECOSYSTEM – THE JOURNEY SO FAR AND THE JOURNEY AHEAD”

[For more infor­ma­tion on the Aero­Fo­rum pan­els at Sin­ga­pore Air­show, please vis­it here]

[15:15] Ques­tion: Alton recent­ly pub­lished an arti­cle about AAM entry into ser­vice con­sid­er­a­tions and the use case of air­port shut­tle, can you share more details about it?

Joshua / Alan: When we wrote the arti­cle, we want­ed to try and under­stand the vehi­cle use cas­es. One of the use cas­es was the air­port shut­tle ser­vice, tak­ing pas­sen­gers from the air­port into the down­town city and vice ver­sa. This mode of trans­port is not new today. In air­ports in New York, there are heli­copter ser­vices that can bring slight­ly more well-heeled pas­sen­gers or busi­ness peo­ple who are short on time to bypass traf­fic and get them from point A to point B or from the air­port to point B in the short­est amount of time. If we look at Asia, Mani­la, Kuala Lumpur, Jakar­ta, and Bangkok are mar­kets where there’s a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty to apply this use case and to bring a lot of val­ue and a lot of ben­e­fit to the res­i­dents today.

eVTOLs today are not designed to trav­el far and at a very fast speed. Giv­en these low­er pay­load range capa­bil­i­ties, they would be very ide­al to serve these short­er haul, but high­er fre­quen­cy routes between the air­port and the city cen­ter. Air­ports need to think about how they can inte­grate this form of ser­vice into the entire con­cept of oper­a­tions, how they can move from the cur­rent mode of trans­port, maybe ground trans­porta­tion, rail trans­porta­tion, and include an addi­tion­al form of eVTOL trans­porta­tion into the whole ecosys­tem to con­nect pas­sen­gers to and from the air­port. As we explore these dif­fer­ent use cas­es, we also explore the dif­fer­ent con­sid­er­a­tions that dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers in the val­ue chain would need to then think about and pre­pare for as we move towards the entry into ser­vice of these vehi­cles in the next one, two, or even three years.

The oth­er dimen­sion that needs to be con­sid­ered is the fact that these are high vol­ume routes. There’s a lot of pas­sen­gers going between two points. One ver­ti­port at the air­port and anoth­er in the city would estab­lish a reg­u­lar sched­ule where oper­a­tors can start to have high uti­liza­tion of the vehi­cles, bring down the cost, and even­tu­al­ly open this ser­vice up to a wider demo­graph­ic pro­file of trav­el­ers.

[21:10] Ques­tion: What are some of the prob­lems that Alton’s clients have asked to solve?

Joshua: There are dif­fer­ent sets of ques­tions that are asked by dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers. If you look at pol­i­cy­mak­ers, they tend to ask ques­tions about safe­ty.

• Are the vehi­cles safe to oper­ate in the urban envi­ron­ment?
• Are there fail-safe mech­a­nisms in case some­thing goes wrong?
• Should we even have eVTOLs in our neigh­bor­hoods?
• Would they be a pub­lic nui­sance or would they be a pub­lic ben­e­fit?

While there are no easy answers to the ques­tions, we will be more like­ly to get those answers as the first pro­to­types start fly­ing in neigh­bor­hoods and in res­i­den­tial areas where peo­ple can look, see, and feel the eVTOLs in their own pres­ence.

I would also like to bring out is the fact that build­ing up a trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture around eVTOLs must be con­sid­ered. How many vehi­cles are you going to have? How many ver­ti­ports are you going to have? What kind of infra­struc­ture are you going to plan for? Those are ques­tions linked to the demand of such a ser­vice. And I think we do have quite a siz­able reper­toire of tools and mod­els that help us under­stand the trav­el pat­terns with­in the city and between cities to help under­stand some of the poten­tial sce­nar­ios in the future of how eVTOLs will grow and devel­op in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas.

Alan: The big­ger ques­tion that we are fre­quent­ly asked is about the size of the address­able mar­ket:

• How big of an AAM mar­ket (for oper­a­tors or OEMs) is there?
• What would the net­work look like?
• How much will that gen­er­ate in terms of rev­enue and what kind of fleet size will be need­ed for an oper­a­tor?
• And then for an OEM, how many vehi­cles could I pos­si­bly sell with­in this spe­cif­ic mar­ket?

[25:15] Ques­tion: What is your / Alton’s out­look for 2024?

Alan: We’ve seen progress with EHang get­ting its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the CAAC late in 2023. But what we’ll see in 2024 is that some of the front-run­ning west­ern OEMs will like­ly make very sig­nif­i­cant progress toward their type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. And many of them are look­ing toward 2025 to get their vehi­cle cer­ti­fied – the likes of Joby and Beta. Even in the Asia Pacif­ic mar­ket – Aut­oflight is one, but there’s also Aerofu­gia, which is a Chi­nese OEM that has already start­ed its type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process with the CAAC in the hopes of get­ting its vehi­cles cer­ti­fied short­ly.

On the oper­a­tions front, that’s where it gets a lit­tle bit more inter­est­ing. After EHang’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, they have laid out plans to launch aer­i­al tourism and sight­see­ing ser­vices with­in Chi­na. We talked about social accep­tance pre­vi­ous­ly, so that’s impor­tant. The indus­try will cer­tain­ly be very inter­est­ed to see the recep­tion from the pub­lic. More impor­tant­ly, it’s also for it to demon­strate the safe­ty, the reli­a­bil­i­ty, and how such a use case might play out around the world when we get more vehi­cles being cer­ti­fied in coun­tries like Japan and South Korea.

In 2024, we will get a lot more clar­i­ty on both the reg­u­la­to­ry cer­ti­fi­ca­tion frame­works for AAM oper­a­tions in these juris­dic­tions, and a greater num­ber of part­ner­ships between both the pub­lic and the pri­vate stake­hold­ers to make this a real­i­ty. It’ll be inter­est­ing to watch, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Asia. Some of these gov­ern­ments, oper­a­tors, and OEMs are push­ing for­ward their plans to get things into ser­vice.

Joshua: If there is a word to describe 2024, it is “antic­i­pa­tion”. I think there will be a lot of announce­ments point­ing to how the future direc­tion of the AAM space will be. And so I’m look­ing in antic­i­pa­tion at what EHang will be doing in Chi­na. They obvi­ous­ly have their cer­tifi­cates in place now. It’s real­ly about putting pas­sen­gers in the vehi­cle and oper­at­ing them safe­ly on their first use case.

I’m also look­ing in antic­i­pa­tion what’s going to hap­pen in Japan and Korea, both front run­ners and lead­ers in the AAM space, espe­cial­ly with Japan and the World Expo next year, and how that will play out in terms of oper­a­tional use case in the city envi­ron­ment.

And then also in Aus­tralia and New Zealand, where the use case is slight­ly dif­fer­ent. It’s a lot more car­go, a lot of remote­ly pilot­ed UAV oper­a­tions, UAS oper­a­tions, which I think por­tend to how the sec­tor might devel­op, not in the next few years, but in the next 10 to 15 years as autonomous tech­nol­o­gy becomes a lot bet­ter, sens­ing and avoid­ing tech­nol­o­gy becomes bet­ter, and we might even­tu­al­ly see a vehi­cle where it’s remote­ly pilot­ed or assist­ed in the future.

[31:55] Ques­tion: What are your final thoughts?

Joshua: Just to reit­er­ate, I think the rub­ber is start­ing to hit the road, and we have said that in 2023, and I think we’ll con­tin­ue to say that in 2024. A lot of things are hap­pen­ing. The space is mov­ing quick­ly, and we are real­ly look­ing for­ward to the day when the first eVTOL starts to fly com­mer­cial­ly and change the way that we inter­act with AAM.

Alan: I think it’s real­ly a case where we do need to man­age our expec­ta­tions with­in the indus­try. I think as fast as things are mov­ing, as much as we see new tech­nolo­gies and new improve­ments to per­for­mance that many of the stake­hold­ers are putting out, this is ulti­mate­ly going to be a mul­ti-year affair. We will see things mov­ing in the right direc­tion this year, but it will not be a case where we will start see­ing many eVTOLs in our skies with­in the next 12 to 24 months. It will be a mul­ti-year process for us to not only devel­op the vehi­cles, devel­op the infra­struc­ture, and find the financ­ing, but also try being able to get that social accep­tance for peo­ple to want to take their vehi­cles and be com­fort­able with see­ing these vehi­cles shar­ing the same air­space as where they work and they live in.