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RECAP: eVTOL Insights’ brings more industry leaders together for its Montreal conference and first one in Canada (Sessions 8 — 16)

Near­ly 100 peo­ple came togeth­er for eVTOL Insights’ Mon­tre­al con­fer­ence and the first event it has host­ed in Cana­da, as indus­try lead­ers joined togeth­er for more in-depth con­ver­sa­tions about the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket.

Tak­ing place at Le Mount Stephen hotel in down­town Mon­tre­al on Thurs­day, May 2nd, the event fea­tured 16 ses­sions which were split equal­ly between the morn­ing and after­noon.

Start­ing the first pan­el dis­cus­sion after lunch, it fea­tured JR Ham­mond, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor at the Cana­di­an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Con­sor­tium (CAAM), Hamid Hami­di, CEO and Founder at Limosa, and Thomas Bom­baert, Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Lead from the Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Organ­i­sa­tion (ICAO). As work con­tin­ues to progress in Cana­da on accel­er­at­ing AAM efforts with­in the coun­try, this con­ver­sa­tion shed light on what is already being done.

With Limosa cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its Limo­Con­nect air­craft, Hamid touch­es upon why Mon­tre­al is such a good hub for the com­pa­ny, while JR points to what the gov­ern­ment bod­ies are doing and how they will instru­men­tal in mov­ing this indus­try for­ward. Thomas then adds addi­tion­al focus from ICAO and the stan­dards towards glob­al har­mon­i­sa­tion.

Marek Rakows­ki from Viasat then deliv­ered an in-depth keynote on the com­pa­ny’s mul­ti­link net­work com­mu­ni­ca­tions for BVLOS oper­a­tions, before Simon Briceno, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer at Jaunt Air Mobil­i­ty, chaired a real­ly inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion on ‘What Does Day One Oper­a­tions Look Like’.

With a lot of focus on the air­craft them­selves, the pan­el of Mar­tin Cullen, Glob­al eVTOL Lead at TE Con­nec­tiv­i­ty, Bryan Wil­lows, AAM Direc­tor — Amer­i­c­as at Bris­tow Group, and Chris Court­ney, Direc­tor of AAM and New Adja­cen­cies at CAE, spoke about a host of com­plex top­ics ahead of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions start­ing.

They includ­ed empha­siz­ing the need for more real­is­tic train­ing sim­u­la­tions and increased cred­it for sim­u­la­tor time, as well as the poten­tial risks of using high volt­age con­nec­tors in air­craft appli­ca­tions. Mar­tin shared insights from his work with the Paris Air Show and dis­cussed TE’s role in pro­duc­ing elec­tri­cal com­po­nents for var­i­ous indus­tries, includ­ing aero­space, while address­ing safe­ty stan­dards and com­po­nent dura­bil­i­ty.

There was also an empha­sis on the need to bal­ance cost and safe­ty in aero­space main­te­nance and oper­a­tions, while the pan­el also expressed con­cerns about using auto­mo­tive com­po­nents in aero­space and their poten­tial impact on main­te­nance fre­quen­cy and safe­ty.

It was then the turn of Kather­ine Ayre of CAYRES to mod­er­ate a great pan­el on ‘how AAM net­works will fit into cities and regions’. This fea­tured Kris­ten Blod­gett, Direc­tor of Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence and Com­mer­cial Strat­e­gy for BETA Tech­nolo­gies, Mandy Nel­son, AAM Strate­gic Rela­tion­ships at Bris­tow Group and Grant Fisk, CEO at Vola­tus Infra­struc­ture & Ener­gy Solu­tions.

We heard more about what Bris­tow’s require­ments are when includ­ing an OEM as an AAM strate­gic part­ner, how the com­pa­ny is help­ing its cus­tomers achieve their sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals and what are its cur­rent focus on at the moment.

As BETA is a one of Bris­tow’s strate­gic part­ners, Kris­ten told the room more about its air­craft and how they can make a dif­fer­ence to Bris­tow’s cus­tomer base. She talks about BETA’s entry into the elec­tric charg­ing infra­struc­ture space, and then the biggest reg­u­la­to­ry or pol­i­cy gap being faced at the moment. Final­ly, Kris­ten shares more details about pilot train­ing — from BETA’s part­ner­ship with CAE.

Grant adds more insights from Vola­tus’ New Eng­land ver­ti­port net­work, where he is see­ing growth and what are the key ques­tions he is ask­ing oper­a­tors and OEMs which are look­ing to part­ner with Vola­tus. He also informs the audi­ence what he feels is miss­ing from the reg­u­la­tors in the last Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) engi­neer­ing brief.

After the final net­work­ing break, we switch top­ics to ‘Mid­dle-Mile Logis­tics and Oth­er Crit­i­cal Mis­sions’, with Pamir Sevin­cel swap­ping the mod­er­a­tor’s chair for a pan­el­list one. He was joined by Alexan­dre Zaramela, CEO of Moya Aero, and Phil Kel­ly, CEO at Ven­ture Kel. This dis­cus­sion focused on how car­go trans­porta­tion before the move­ment of peo­ple can help gen­er­ate that ear­ly rev­enue stream.

As Moya is pri­ori­tis­ing car­go flights before pas­sen­gers due to safe­ty con­cerns, Alexan­dre tells the audi­ence more about this and how by devel­op­ing automo­nous (or auto­mat­ic) drones, it is high­light­ing their poten­tial for a num­ber of key mis­sions — such as fire­fight­ing and res­cue in remote areas. Phil talks about how there could be a poten­tial gap in the mar­ket for stan­dard­ised pay­loads for mul­ti­ple applications/cargo appli­ca­tions for drones. He added that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards also need to be addressed, as cur­rent ones for Class One drones aren’t.

As Pamir works with ear­ly stage star­tups and VCs in aero­space, we ask him whether he is see­ing suf­fi­cient fund­ing for this mar­ket and what are some of the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties which get them excit­ed when they look at this space. Phil and Alexan­dre also expand on the impor­tance of invest­ment for the next lev­el of pro­duc­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Gwen Lighter of GoAero Prize then gave a com­pelling pre­sen­ta­tion on the non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion, as it shared more infor­ma­tion about its com­pe­ti­tion, which offers $2+ mil­lion in prizes to design and build Emer­gency Response Fly­ers for dis­as­ter response.

The penul­ti­mate pan­el, chaired by Mike Hirschberg of the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety and focused on Sup­ply Chain and Man­u­fac­tur­ing, heard from Bri­an Gar­rett-Glaser from Joby Avi­a­tion, and Dana Jensen, Senior Indus­tri­al Pol­i­cy Ana­lyst for the USAF’s Office of Com­mer­cial and Eco­nom­ic Analy­sis.

With Joby plan­ning to man­u­fac­ture its air­craft in Day­ton, Ohio, Bri­an was able to share more details on the time­line but give addi­tion­al insights on how the com­pa­ny is approach­ing the dif­fer­ent chal­lenges, with Dana able to add some excel­lent points on the work he is doing and what he is see­ing across both aero­space and avi­a­tion.

The final dis­cus­sion of the day was mod­er­at­ed by Ser­gio Cecut­ta of SMG Con­sult­ing, who brought togeth­er Adam War­moth, Head of Prod­uct at Archer, Matt Broff­man from Lil­i­um and Caryn M. Lund, VP of Gov­ern­ment Rela­tions at Fer­rovial Ver­ti­ports. Enti­tled ‘Entry into Ser­vice: The Final Count­down’, this was a fas­ci­nat­ing finale as each speak­er out­lined the final pieces to the jig­saw, which each com­pa­ny is work­ing hard to com­plete.

With Archer tar­get­ing the short­er, inter-city ser­vices, Adam shared more details about Archer’s roadmap, with Matt able to expand on the longer dis­tances which Lil­i­um are try­ing with region­al air mobil­i­ty. As one of the major ver­ti­port providers, Caryn brought an excel­lent overview on this top­ic — par­tic­u­lar­ly with the work it is doing with Lil­i­um in Flori­da.

It was a fit­ting end to the Mon­tre­al con­fer­ence, with the excite­ment of the awards cer­e­mo­ny to fol­low.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

eVTOL Insights is part of the Industry Insights Group. Registered in the UK. Company No: 14395769