FIA2024 REVISITED: David Rottblatt of Supernal discusses ‘wonderful’ airshow, public reaction to S‑A2 and company roadmap update

As the dust set­tles from anoth­er suc­cess­ful Farn­bor­ough Air­show, it was anoth­er event where both trade pro­fes­sion­als and the pub­lic could get up close to some of the eVTOL air­craft cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment.

Among the OEMs dis­play­ing at Farn­bor­ough were Super­nal, with their chalet over­look­ing the air­craft sta­t­ic dis­play enjoy­ing a steady flow of vis­i­tors through­out the week, who all want­ed to get a clos­er look at S‑A2; Super­nal’s eVTOL air­craft, which is due to be oper­a­tional from 2028 onwards.

eVTOL Insights sat down with David Rot­tblatt, the com­pa­ny’s new­ly-appoint­ed Sr. Direc­tor, Strat­e­gy & Com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, to get his thoughts on the air­show, more details about the design of S‑A2 and what the next cou­ple of years has in store for its devel­op­ment.

Jason Pritchard, eVTOL Insights’ Exec­u­tive Edi­tor, asked the ques­tions.

Great to catch up again, David. How has the Farn­bor­ough Air­show been for you and your team?

David Rot­tblatt: “This is my first show with Super­nal and it’s been won­der­ful to be able to intro­duce our air­craft to the pub­lic, oper­a­tors and part­ners, every­one who is inter­est­ed in hear­ing how we have pro­gressed since the last time we were here.

“It’s also been a great learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty; to be expe­ri­enc­ing the air­craft for the first time through the eyes of peo­ple who are com­ing here and ask­ing ques­tions, under­stand­ing what excites them and their hopes for the indus­try.

“And it’s also about what we can do to part­ner with those expec­ta­tions. It’s been a great learn­ing expe­ri­ence — I’ve been work­ing in the indus­try for eight years and I’m still learn­ing so much. The fact that new ques­tions and ideas come up also helps us to under­stand how the mar­ket is matur­ing.”

S‑A2 has been draw­ing a lot of plau­dits from those at the air­show, who have sat in the seats and visu­alised how it would look when tak­ing a jour­ney. How impor­tant is that in help­ing future pas­sen­gers under­stand this will be a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence?

DR: “It’s been very eye open­ing. Super­nal is a B2B busi­ness so we’re sell­ing to oper­a­tors, but we s must have an eye for the type of expe­ri­ences our cus­tomers want to pro­vide to future pas­sen­gers. The way we design the air­craft is inclu­sive for that indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence.

“As we learn togeth­er with oper­a­tors and what they expect out of that expe­ri­ence, the more we’re able to pro­duce an air­craft that has the right prod­uct mar­ket fit. The con­sis­tent theme at the moment is the pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence, and even though a flight in an eVTOL air­craft might be on aver­age between 10 to 12 min­utes, the same expec­ta­tions for com­fort are there. Our team has done a great job of incor­po­rat­ing this into the design of the air­craft.

“For exam­ple, our seat pitch is cur­rent­ly 34 inch­es. The height of the cab­in allows taller peo­ple to feel com­fort­able as well. The fact we have cho­sen a con­fig­u­ra­tion that has four seats fac­ing for­ward is con­sis­tent with the type of expe­ri­ence our fleets oper­a­tors can offer.

“The more we’re able to incor­po­rate these types of cus­tomer inputs, the bet­ter. We’re posi­tioned to make sure we’re build­ing an air­craft that not only pas­sen­gers want to be in, but oper­a­tors want to buy.”

We’ve got more AAM air­craft on dis­play at Farn­bor­ough, which is great. In your view, what has changed since the last air­show back in 2022?

DR: “It’s extreme­ly valu­able for the pub­lic, as well as oper­a­tors, to see these vehi­cles side by side. It helps to tell the sto­ry of how the ser­vice these air­craft will offer is com­ple­men­tary to the ser­vice the larg­er air­craft offer, and how that fits togeth­er into a com­plete pas­sen­ger jour­ney. It’s also the abil­i­ty to visu­alise what it will look like when step­ping from one air­craft to anoth­er; to tell that sto­ry.

“The indus­try has grown a lot since Farn­bor­ough in 2022. We’ve learned a lot, the indus­try has learned a lot and I hope vis­i­tors see how the these learn­ings are reflect­ed in S‑A2 and our vision for the future.”

Dur­ing Farn­bor­ough, Super­nal announced a few more part­ner­ships — most notably with Sig­ma. Can you tell us more about this part­ner­ship and the impor­tance of it for the com­pa­ny?

DR: “There are mul­ti­ple seg­ments that are real­ly inter­est­ing. Lux­avi­a­tion, which Sig­ma is a part of, is one of the most respect­ed brands inter­na­tion­al­ly and specif­i­cal­ly in Europe with­in the exec­u­tive oper­a­tor space. We were able to share our inten­tions of devel­op­ing the AAM mar­ket through­out Asia, and that’s one of the regions we think stands to grow quick­ly.

“The pub­lic is putting a tremen­dous amount of sup­port into this indus­try and Super­nal is very proud to be part­ner­ing with a trust­ed oper­a­tor, who knows what it means to own and oper­ate air­craft safe­ly.

“The more we can show the pub­lic these types of part­ner­ships that are being forged with trust­ed oper­a­tors like Lux­avi­a­tion and Sig­ma, the more they can believe this indus­try will be exe­cut­ed. Asia is cer­tain­ly one of our home mar­kets, when you think of our par­ent com­pa­ny [Hyundai Motor Group]. We’re very excit­ed.”

Super­nal is focused on the holis­tic approach when it comes to devel­op­ing its S‑A2 air­craft. A lot of focus is under­stand­ably on the air­craft, but can you tell us what else the com­pa­ny is doing to ring this all togeth­er?

DR: “There’s a lot Super­nal has to offer the mar­ket through the DNA it stands to inher­it from Hyundai Motor Group. Some is in the engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing exper­tise, but there are a lot of oth­er tech­nolo­gies and capa­bil­i­ties, plus affil­i­ates we can part­ner with to pro­vide us with more of a com­plete approach. One of these exam­ples is HMG’s bat­tery affil­i­ate, Mobis.

“Mobis offers great exper­tise in how bat­ter­ies are man­u­fac­tured and main­tained. When we talk to some oper­a­tors about man­ag­ing or not man­ag­ing the bat­tery, we’re able to offer new and inno­v­a­tive solu­tions for how we can take some things off their plate. Where we’d feel com­fort­able man­ag­ing as a result of us being the sub­ject mat­ter expert.

“There are oth­er affil­i­ates which can help us com­plete the ecosys­tem approach regard­ing how we can bring this prod­uct to mar­ket, poten­tial­ly from a financ­ing per­spec­tive as well as after­mar­ket and ser­vic­ing.

“Hyundai Motor Group has hun­dreds of loca­tions around the world, and as we alll get a bet­ter idea where the major­i­ty of our ear­ly cus­tomers are, the quick­er we’re able to under­stand which affil­i­ates and phys­i­cal enti­ties can sup­port Supernal’s cus­tomers. This applies not only to the ini­tial air­craft sale, but also serves a dual pur­pose to sup­port them in the after­mar­ket. That’s some­thing we’re very keen on going for­ward.”

A lot of talk recent­ly has been on edu­cat­ing the pub­lic. We’ve seen recent­ly the push­back from Parisian coun­cil­lors ahead of this Summer’s Olympic Games in the city. What are your thoughts when it comes to adopt­ing oper­a­tions in a city?

DR: “The way that I look at build­ing a more spe­cif­ic prod­uct which com­mu­ni­ties and stake­hold­ers can react to is by devel­op­ing a very spe­cif­ic con­cept of oper­a­tion with an oper­a­tor. And it usu­al­ly has five ingre­di­ents: the launch city, use case, route net­work and fleet siz­ing exer­cis­es to sup­port that route net­work togeth­er with the asso­ci­at­ed busi­ness mod­el.

“When we get to that lev­el of speci­fici­ty, togeth­er with the oper­a­tors, then we have the abil­i­ty to share that with the intend­ed host com­mu­ni­ty. It can read what we’ve designed and have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide feed­back before our plans are made pub­lic.

“That pre-align­ment and abil­i­ty to answer any ques­tions or con­cerns is fun­da­men­tal to the abil­i­ty for this indus­try to have a suc­cess­ful future. Peo­ple deserve to have informed con­sent and know what’s about to come. That begins with com­mu­ni­ty align­ment.

“We have a great ecosys­tem part­ner­ships team which will be spear­head­ing that effort. Once that con­cept of oper­a­tion is devel­oped, we then have the abil­i­ty to build that ecosys­tem around that ConOps as soon as the host com­mu­ni­ty feels they are hap­py to sup­port that going for­ward.”

Super­nal is tar­get­ing a lat­er launch than some of its com­peti­tors. Can you share any updates of the company’s roadmap over the next 12 to 18 months?

DR: “Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll be final­is­ing the assem­bly of our first full-scale tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor (FSTD). That is cur­rent­ly being built at one of our facil­i­ties in Irvine, Cal­i­for­nia.

“As soon as that vehi­cle is done being assem­bled, it’ll then leave our test­ing facil­i­ty and we expect that to hap­pen towards the end of this year. FSTD will pro­vide a lot of real­ly impor­tant data, which will help inform the next gen­er­a­tion of our air­craft.

We’ll build and test the FSTD and future pro­to­type vehi­cles to val­i­date our design strat­e­gy, con­trol laws — a lot of the things which are impor­tant to us to make sure that when it comes to move onto the pro­duc­tion vehi­cle, we’ve got all those char­ac­ter­is­tics fig­ured out.

“That’s what short-term suc­cess looks like. I think long-term through 2026 and 2027 is mak­ing sure those addi­tion­al air­craft can be built and test­ed in dif­fer­ent phas­es of flight. They can be exam­ined as it per­tains to the tran­si­tion of the tilt-rotor and then we have an eye on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in order to deliv­er our first air­craft.

“We plan on dual cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at the same time with the FAA and EASA, so we’re build­ing our vehi­cle to the high­est lev­els of com­mer­cial avi­a­tion safe­ty stan­dards, in order to make sure we can pro­duce the best and safest air­craft.”